Epic Games’ president Mike Capps opined in an interview with IndustryGamers:
“Your iPhone 8 will probably plug into your TV, or better yet, wirelessly connect to your television set to give you that big screen gaming experience with good sound,” Capps explained. “So really, what’s the point of those next-gen consoles? It’s a very interesting situation to be looking at. That’s what we’re starting to think about more… not how do we scale from some Nintendo platform to some other future console.”
Thing is, Mike, with the addition of an Apple TV, we can already do this. And this sort of talk lends some credibility to the notion that Apple might get in bed with television manufacturers or maybe even make their own.
If we can do this with iPhone 4 (and arguably with the 3GS), then what might the iPhone 8 bring – considering that it’s due to hit in around 2014-2015, it’s an interesting question.
If dedicated under-set consoles are already pumping out high def graphics, then where will the technology go next? I’m looking at pico projectors to accompany my iPhone and iPad so that I’m completely mobile – though I note that there’s still an issue with decent sound.
I remember watching a NORTEL show reel about how they saw the future and it had us all running around with touch screen phones and placing them in cradles in our homes and cars and accessing everything from these tiny devices. I reckon the NORTEL visioneers would have been thinking about personal jet packs and a removal of balkanisation of states when they penned that vision but we can do this pretty much now. Wirelessly.
The future of consoles is mobile.