Ubisoft CEO believes we’re down to the last generation of consoles before streaming takes over

We’re slowly noticing the transition of different segments into streaming instead of owning media, whether these be for music, TV shows, movies, etc. Gaming seems to be the next thing and one of the big names in the industry seems to think it’s almost upon us. Ubisoft CEO and co-founder Yves Guillemot believes we’re down to one last generation before this will be completely replaced by the ability to stream games to a number of platform-agnostic devices.

“I think we will see another generation, but there is a good chance that step-by-step we will see less and less hardware,” Guillemot told Variety. “With time, I think streaming will become more accessible to many players and make it not necessary to have big hardware at home.”

Streaming, Guillemot believes, has helped the game industry innovate faster. “It is going to help the AAA game industry grow much faster,” he said. “We have to work on the accessibility of those games, to make sure they can be played on any device, but the fact that we will be able to stream those games on mobile phones and television screens without a console is going to change a lot of the industry.”

With the increasing reliance and use of cloud servers by game developers, it means the heaviest work done by computers are being transferred to outside servers. And the more developers use these, then it’ll mean there won’t be much need for the console to make sure games run smoothly. People can just take their games anywhere.

A number of companies are already working in this space. NVIDIA has Geforce Now, which is said to transform “any Mac or PC into a high-performance gaming rig.” Valve has its Link service, which lets users stream games on different platforms, including smartphones.

“There are quite a few people that are working on streaming, like NVIDIA,” Guillemot said. “So, we think it’s a trend and that it will continue to evolve. Eventually, the technology will improve dramatically, which will allow us to have a very smooth experience in the big cities of the world.”