Source: The Next Web
Bloomberg Intelligence's $38B forecast for streamed games threatens Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo's hardware-dependent business models, not because cloud is suddenly viable—it's been "five years away" for a decade—but because the infrastructure finally exists: fiber deployment in developed markets has crossed critical thresholds, and both companies now treat cloud as core strategy rather than hedge. The extinction claim overstates the timeline (niche hardcore players will keep local hardware), but the mass market calculus is real: consoles only survive if they win the low-latency, offline-capable segments that streaming cannot yet serve, and that shrinking wedge gets worse every year as network quality improves.