I don't think it's indicative of anything that people are doing those things (watching shows/movies, listening to music) on their gaming systems. Including gaming, these are activities that people have always split amongst their free time. The only difference is now they can do all of those things on one box.
That's a fair point.
The main reason why mobile technology has developed so quickly in such a short amount of time is that mobile development has been ignored for years. People are taking the things they learned from desktop/other development and applying it to mobile and making big things happen in a very short amount of time. This rate of development is simply unsustainable forever, and it's going to slow down some time over the next few years.
I don't think we'll see phones and tablets as powerful as the PS4/Xbox One for a long while, but does that really matter? Hardcore gamers, such as those who frequent this board and other internet forums, will obviously care, but what about COD/Fifa/Madden bro who only buys those games and no others? Will he care? I don't think so.
These people are going to have to make a decision: download and play games on the device that's already in their pocket, or shell out $400/?349/400eur for a new device to play games. I think they'll simply reach into their pockets and buy the game there.
That's going to be a big problem. People are willing to buy games now (GTA5/COD/etc.) because they don't have to pay a lot for a console to play the games. There is no barrier to entry. In the future, they will, and I think they're going to have a hard time justifying putting down the cash to buy a dedicated gaming machine.
About the Steam Box, I don't see what could their pathway to success be. The N?1 target audience of Steam is made of people who have a gaming PC and therefor will have very little interest in a Steam Box. So they need to convince non PC gamers to jump on board, but how are they going to do that when they have minimal brand recognition and just about jack shit as exclusive IP (one Half Life game every 15 years, yay!)?
Jack shit as exclusive IP? Wtf? How about Dota2, a game that regularly has 450,000 concurrent players. Or Portal 2, a game that sold millions of copies across multiple devices. Or Left4Dead. Or Team Fortress. Or Counter-Strike, which had over 1.6 million unique players playing it last month.
Anyway..
I think this quote explains a lot -
"The threat right now is that Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway towards entering the living room with their platform," Newell said. "I think that there's a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging - I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily. The question is can we make enough progress in the PC space to establish ourselves there, and also figure out better ways of addressing mobile before Apple takes over the living room?"
Gabe Newell: Steam Box's biggest threat isn't consoles, it's Apple | Polygon
Assuming Newell is right, and Apple/Android do make big plays in the gaming world, Valve is probably the company in the best position to serve the audience of dedicated gamers that would be left behind. They'd be able to provide these gamers with a variety of different products at difference pricepoints to match their needs, something Microsoft/Sony are unable to do with their 'one size fits all' approach.
Valve is expecting the console market to bottom out sometime soon. They're simply setting themselves up to pick up the pieces if this were to happen.
