Tekken series head honcho Katsuhiro Harada has told the latest issue of Famitsu that the PlayStation 4’s successor won’t be a traditional games console, but rather a cloud-based service.
Harada-san commented (via a translation by DualShockers), “I think in the future things will be played on the service, rather than on the hardware. The Cloud is often mentioned, and if cloud services progress, the time when only the name of the service will remain come some day.
“The PS5 probably won’t have a main console, but just the screen and controller. So what remains will be just the name of the service. It could be named just ‘PlayStation Network.’ Steam is defined by a platform, but it’s not a hardware platform. It’s the name of the service.”
Industry commentators have said that the next generation of hardware (PS4 and Xbox One) will likely be the last of the traditional model featuring hardware and packaged goods. Instead, many believe it will give way to digital distribution services similar to the aforementioned Steam.
What do you feel, PSU readers? Will PS4 be the last of its kind, or do you think PS5 will carry on the traditional hardware industry model? Let us know in the comments section below.