‘Consoles won’t go away’ says Warren Spector

Warren Spector, creator of Deus Ex and the recipient of a lifetime achievement award at this years Game Developer Choice Awards, says that consoles are here to stay, despite increasing competition from the mobile gaming sector.

"I don’t know that console gaming will ever go away," Spector told GamesIndustry Intenational (formerly gamesindustry.biz).

"I think it’s going to become more – god I said I would never get into the business of prediction, but here I go – I think what you’re going to see is an increasing sort of stratification, where you see fewer, much higher end games that continue to do exceptionally well on the console."

Spector says that as the cost of making competitive console games gets higher, there will be fewer publishers and developers who can afford to take the risks.

"That’s going to leave a lot of people behind. It’s a lot like when, frankly, the first CDs came around and everybody at Origin [Systems] was looking at this silver disk going ‘oh my god, what happens when people with more money than we have start filling that thing with assets?’ Well now, I mean, once you start actually doing Pixar quality interactive entertainment, there aren’t going to be a lot of companies who can afford to do that."

Spector believes it is important for developers to realize they are becoming part of an ecosystem not ruled by any one platform, but must remain flexible.

He may be considering making a game for iOS or other mobile platform himself.

"I think a lot about ‘how do I bring that idea that playstyle matters and choice and consequence gaming, character-driven story stuff, to that little iPhone or the little Android device?’ No one has really done that, and so for me personally, I’m looking at that as an opportunity and hoping I get a chance to do it."