Xbox creator: ‘Games consoles are not dead’

The man who invented the Xbox has dismissed the notion that the console market is dying off.

Seamus Blackley – who proposed the creation of Microsoft’s first console – now works on mobile games at Innovative Leisure. Yet he believes the likes of mobile and social will complement consoles, not destroy them.

Any business model will work as long as you have the content,” he told MCV.

It is the medium that pulls people through the business models and not the other way around.

You can now make mobile games that are really compelling. It no longer requires a high cost device. But there’s nothing like playing Uncharted on a console in front of your TV.

It is not fair to compare console to mobile, there are different audiences. And when it is the same audience, you will find a lot of them play with their mobile device during the day and a console when they get home.

I’m amused by journalists who have that play pattern then write that the console business is dead. I started off in PC and people predicted the death of that because of the console. It didn’t happen. It was the same with the arrival of TV, which terrified the movie people. But that hasn’t killed off movies, they complemented each other.”