Are consoles going the way of the dinosaur? Analysts seem to think so, but Minecraft‘s sales in 2013 show that consumers still value a dedicated gaming experience.
Mojang’s fiscal year 2014 results show a revenue total of 38% from PC, 30% from consoles (PS3 and Xbox 360), and 25% from mobile. These percentages have been achieved despite the PC version being $27, console being $20, and mobile being $7.
Today, EEDAR‘s chief product officer Geoffrey Zatkin shared during a GDC panel that he believes the current generation of consoles is likely to be the last. However, software is still flying off shelves, and the PS4 and Xbox One have achieved milestones early in their lifecycles that previous consoles would only dream of.
Minecraft is fortunate enough to be scalable so that it can tap into several markets. That’s a rare quality that it has used to its benefit to produce over $325 million of revenue in the last year alone. It’s more likely that we’ll see other creative projects that are able to span many platforms rather than a complete abandonment of consoles.
Nintendo is rumored to have technology in the works that allow it to release both a console and handheld that work in tandem. That’s one way of tackling the issue of an increasingly pressured console market. However, Sony and Microsoft currently have nothing to fall back on.
