At least according Ben Cousins the head of ngmoco a AAA mobile studio in Sweden. Cousins also worked on free-to-play projects at Sony, EA, and DICE, so he’s speaking from experience. Earlier this year while giving a talk at GDC, Cousins outlined what he sees as the death of the modern console. He pointed to the growth of companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook who focus on social platforms and smartphones, saying that their market share is growing, rapidly, and that they are siphoning the market away from more traditional consoles. But Cousins thinks that this is due more to monetization than anything else, as most of the games developed for Apple, Google and Facebook use freemium models. Now he’s outlined how console games themselves, and how we pay for them, are also changing.

read more >