 Hey everyone, so today we're going to talk about something a little different, something from Sony, PlayStation. This is interesting because this comes from Sean Layden, one of the higher ups, and he did an interview last month with Game Informer, but there was something in the interview that kind of flew under the radar until Windows Central caught wind of it and brought it up. So a link to that interview and Windows Central and as well as where I found this story down in the description, because essentially Sean Layden is talking about a future where consoles aren't this necessary enclosed ecosystem sort of thing. Essentially it feels like a nod towards the future of gaming being game streaming and not home consoles, and he even notes that some of his own staff might be upset that he even says this, especially since we know or at least presume PlayStation 5 is going to be coming. But here's what he had to say and I'm getting this quote from Reset Era and let's just dive in because I think it's very interesting to talk about. So he says, I don't want to put too fine a point on this because it might upset some of the people I work with. But I think effectively we're looking at a kind of post console world where you can have quality gaming experiences across a variety of technologies. Sure, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro provide what, of course, we think is the best gaming experience, but the under consoles out there be it Nintendo Switch, Xbox One X or tablets or phones, there are great experiences across all these. What we need to do is recognize all that we're not a little gaming ghetto and we're not federated or aligned at all. We're all part of the same gaming community. We just come at it through different doorways. I think the future will be an extension of that metaphor. Your platform is not your hideaway. It's just your doorway to all these other gamer folk. So I think it's clear the impetus here isn't necessarily just pointing at game streaming and all that. I think it's also pointing at that the future of gaming is going to be less dependent on what platform you're on. Right now platforms are like gated communities, Xbox Live, that's like a community in that of itself. The PlayStation Network, that's a community in that of itself. The Nintendo Switch Online Service, that's a community within itself. Each system operates on its own independent ecosystem. Even on PC where you would figure things would be more universal, there's still like segregation going on whether people like it or not with the battle.net or I guess Blizzard launcher for their own stuff. You have obviously Epic Games forcing their thing, you have Origin, you have Steam and they're all kind of gated from each other. If you buy a game on Origin, you can't suddenly play with people who own that game on Steam. It's very closed off in that way. Each platform sort of has its own way of handling things. And I think Sean Layden, even though he knows his fellow staff mates don't want to admit it. He's saying that the future of gaming is going to be less dependent on which platform you buy. That's just going to be how people access things. And that does point to some game streaming services like if PlayStation launches their own game streaming service for their new games, they're obviously not going to want to just limit it to PlayStation. They're going to want it on TVs and phones and tablets. We just saw yesterday at Inside Xbox, we saw Forza Horizon 4 running on a phone through Project XCloud, which is their streaming service they're working on that's supposed to compete directly with Project Stream from Google. So there's already some of this happening on the Xbox side of things. And we also have heard rumors in the past, of course, about XCloud coming to Nintendo Switch. And I assume that Microsoft would want XCloud to be on PlayStation 4 as well because why wouldn't they want to have 100 million more users to potentially get their service and play their games? So I think this is a situation where you have one of the heads at Sony basically fully aware that the future of gaming is going to be less platform specific, more platform agnostic. Right? Like games are just going to be available on everything everywhere regardless of how you access it. And it is going to take companies working together to make that happen. Of course, you know, Nintendo is completely closed off from everything and so is Sony and Microsoft. Microsoft seems to be more open to it. But you know, as an example, if they can put Xbox Live and their XCloud service on PlayStation is Xbox then going to be open to PlayStation doing the same thing on their platform. I don't know. So it's a very interesting world we're living in where the future of gaming looks like it's about to have a major shift because right now everything is very console war driven. Right? You know, Xbox One X is the most powerful console in the world so therefore it's better than Sony. But Sony has better exclusives, Sony is better and they didn't screw up the launch of this generation. Oh, Nintendo is better because they're portable and look at their games and their exclusives. Like there's always this budding of heads of console wars that I absolutely detest. I mean, heck I got PlayStation stuff in the background of my video for the first time ever on a channel that has Nintendo in its name. That's how little I give a crap about console wars. I think it's the stupidest thing ever. The stupidest thing ever. But reality is that's kind of how the industry has been driven for a long time. All these consoles budding heads directly competing. Sean Layden's kind of saying that a future might exist or will exist where there's no longer a budding of heads in terms of trying to get as many consumers as you can into your ecosystem. Rather, the budding of heads is just going to be on what your platform provides in a unique way. As an example, Nintendo might be the way that you get traditional controls in a portable form that can easily dock with your TV, a.k.a. the Switch. Sony and Microsoft might have to find bigger ways to differentiate their consoles from each other. If a world exists where everything's platform agnostic and all of these exclusives aren't really exclusives anymore outside of being natively exclusive, right? I assume that Sony is not going to release a physical disc of one of their games for a future Xbox platform. But through streaming service, they'll maybe allow their games to be played on Xbox or replay it on Switch. So again, that's closer to the future of being platform agnostic. And I do think that being platform agnostic is wholly beneficial to consumers a little bit. I'm saying a little bit because the ideal way for consumers to get all this stuff is to not only have the option to buy these things physically on all platforms, which I don't think is going to be a reality, but also the ability to stream them all and have them stream them all through a universal system, like a Netflix of gaming where everything is just on one streaming platform. I don't think that's something that's ever going to exist. I think Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, all these companies are just going to have their own streaming services and everything's going to be divided up. And that does happen with streaming too. Like, while Netflix is great, it doesn't have everything. So that's why Hulu is still a thing. You know, that's why movie rentals through Voodoo is still a thing. Or Amazon Prime is still a thing. Like, there's obviously not really a universal for that either, but clearly it's Netflix at the top and everything else is just playing catch up. And I don't know if we're ever going to get a Netflix of gaming, but what I do know is it's really interesting to think about a future where what platform you buy isn't relevant in terms of what games you're going to get. It might be relevant in terms of how the games perform. It might be relevant in the way that you play the game. As an example, maybe Sony just dives deeper in the VR and that becomes like their stick. So like, if you want great VR experiences, you go to Sony, you know, more affordable VR. I don't know. I'm not really sure. I don't know where the future of gaming is going. You don't know where the future is of gaming. Like, we all have our wants and desires for the future of gaming. But no, none of us know where it's going. We just have hopes and dreams and aspirations for where we would like it to go. And there's probably many of you out there that want the gaming industry to stay exactly as it is today. Heck, there's people that probably want it to go back to the way it used to be back during PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and Wii or maybe all the way back to the Sega Dreamcast or the Sega Genesis days. Heck, there's rumors floating out there right now that there might be a new Sega console or in addition to that, that Sega is working with Google on their new console and their new streaming service. Which by the way, there's a Google conference coming up on the 19th of this month early in the morning that's going to be talking about Google's foray in the gaming. Is that going to have a traditional console? Is it just going to be about their project stream? Are they making games now? I don't know. It's really exciting just to see what's happening because Google is such a multi-billion dollar company that you always wonder, OK, if they're going to take a serious dive in, are they going to be that next big competitor like when Microsoft took a dive in, right? Like, we haven't seen anyone have a serious attempt at diving in as a competitor in this space. Well, since Microsoft, we've seen attempts with Ouya and a few other systems. There's that Mad Dog Studios that's releasing or something like that, the Mad Dog System. That looks interesting, but is that going to end up being a serious competitor? I don't know, but like a Google system or an Amazon system, that could be something that might be able to make waves, depending on the affordability and obviously how their streaming service is all tied into it. So I think we're at an interesting turning point in gaming where there's going to be more competition than ever for platform, but less competition in terms of dealing with console exclusives. Now, yes, I think we still have at least one more generation where Xbox, Switch, and PlayStation all have their exclusive games, and that's just the way it's going to be, even though Microsoft's being a bit more open and they're requiring all future Xbox games to support their Project X Cloud. That was the thing that came out as well over the past 24 hours. I think that we are just in an interesting time, and I want to know your guys' thoughts on where you think the future of gaming is going and what concerns you might have. And I also want to hear, is there anything you're excited about? Are you excited about a future where, regardless of what platform you buy, you could play Uncharted, you know, Mario Odyssey, and Halo on the same platform, even if it requires a streaming service for some of those games. Are you excited that that's a reality that Sean Layden seems to be implying? The industry is moving towards. Anyways, I want to say thank you to all the people that brought up this story recently. I don't know how I even missed it, because I actually read that game a former interview, but I guess when you're reading a long form interview, sometimes your brain shuts off at some points when you're reading it. So thanks for Windows Central and all the stuff for bringing this topic back to the forefront, because it's very important. We're talking about the future of this industry that we're all in, whether you, like Nintendo or not, Sony or Microsoft or PC, like this is the future. And it's interesting to see what one of the major players in the future had to say about where the industry is going. Anyways, thank you guys so much for tuning in. I am Nathaniel Robeljance from Nintendo Prime. If you liked this video, drop it like, hey, if you enjoy this content, there's gonna be more content like this, including more Nintendo content, Microsoft, Sony, PC. I'm gonna be expanding the content here at the channel for a little while. Don't worry, for those of you that are here for the Nintendo stuff, we'll fill up plenty of Nintendo content, Nintendo focused content, all that great stuff. But we're gonna be trying to cover a few more things that I'm interested in and just seeing how things go. And hopefully this is the start of that and that you guys enjoyed it. So thanks for tuning in, subscribe for more, and I'll catch you in the next video.