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| Gaming no longer revolves around a single box. Consoles now sit alongside PCs, handhelds, and phones as just one way to play. |
By Jon Scarr
When people talk about a “post-console future,” it usually turns into console war noise. Someone assumes it means consoles are dying tomorrow. Someone else assumes it means nobody will own hardware anymore. Then the whole thing melts into vibes and tribalism.
Shawn Layden’s take is more interesting because it’s less dramatic. He isn’t predicting the death of consoles. He’s questioning whether the current model can stay the norm forever, especially when gaming has grown into something much bigger than the console bubble.
Source credit: The comments discussed here come from a recent Character Select interview with former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden, hosted by Naomi Kyle and published on the Pause for Thought YouTube channel.
This is part two of a linked mini-series. If you haven’t read Part One yet, start there, because it sets up the context for everything this piece builds on. Layden argues that exclusives still matter right now, while also hinting that the box they live inside may not be the final form of gaming access.
Read Part One: You Didn’t Stop Caring About Exclusives. The Industry Just Stopped Explaining Them
Gaming Is Massive, But Consoles Haven’t Grown the Same Way
Layden points out a blunt reality. Gaming as a whole is enormous, but console generations still tend to cap out around the same scale. The audience grows, but the console ceiling doesn’t really explode the way people assume it should.
That matters because the industry keeps behaving like consoles are the universal centre of gaming, even though the numbers suggest consoles are more like one major lane among several. PC continues to evolve. Mobile keeps pulling in huge audiences. Handheld PC-style devices are now part of the conversation. Cloud Gaming and remote play have become normal for a lot of people, even when they’re not the norm.
If you’re trying to grow gaming beyond its current ceiling, it’s fair to ask whether “buy this specific box to access this specific library” can remain the long-term foundation. Layden’s point isn’t that consoles fail. It’s that consoles may be limiting the scale of what gaming can become.
The Betamax Warning Isn’t Just a History Lesson
Layden brings up Betamax versus VHS for a reason. Sony’s Betamax wasn’t the story of a clearly worse product losing. It was the story of a locked format losing to a format that spread everywhere through licensing.
People didn’t want to think about compatibility. They wanted to watch tapes. The industry coalesced around what was easiest to access and easiest to share. That same pattern shows up again and again in entertainment. CD, DVD, Blu-ray, and modern streaming all leaned toward standardization and broad access, even while companies still competed on features and premium hardware.
Gaming never fully made that leap. You still need specific hardware for specific libraries. Even if your TV, phone, or PC could technically run the experience, access is still restricted by platform walls. Layden’s question is basically: how long can gaming keep operating like that when everything else moved on?
So What Happens to Exclusives in a Post-Console Direction?
This is where the conversation connects directly back to the first article in this series. A post-console direction doesn’t automatically erase platform identity. It doesn’t automatically mean every game launches everywhere. It just changes what exclusivity means.
If the industry ever moves toward broader access models, exclusives could shift from being hardware requirements to being ecosystem-defining statements. In other words, a game could still be “PlayStation” in tone, funding, and creative leadership, without the idea that you must own a specific plastic box to experience it.
That might sound strange right now, but it’s already happening in small ways. Faster PC ports. Wider device support. Remote play. Cloud options for some ecosystems. Subscription libraries that make where you play more flexible than it used to be. These aren’t the end of consoles. They’re early signs that access is becoming more fluid.
You can already see parts of this thinking playing out more openly on some platforms than others. Xbox has been the most explicit about treating hardware as one access point among many, pushing PC parity, cloud access, and subscriptions alongside its consoles. That doesn’t make it the finished version of this future, but it does show how exclusivity can shift from a box requirement to something closer to an ecosystem identity.
Ecosystems Are the Real Product Now
If you’ve been reading 4ScarrsGaming lately, you’ve seen this idea pop up. The console isn’t the only lock-in anymore. The ecosystem is.
Your account history. Your friends list. Your digital library. Your subscription habits. Your cloud saves. Your trophies and achievements. The convenience of staying where your games already live. That’s the modern gravity.
Layden’s take fits that perfectly. The question isn’t whether consoles still have value. They do. The question is whether the console has to be the gatekeeper forever, or whether it becomes one access point among several, like a premium way to enter an ecosystem instead of the only way.
A Post-Console Future Doesn’t Mean Consoles Disappear
Here’s the version of this that actually makes sense. Consoles don’t vanish. They stop being mandatory.
They become a preferred choice, not the only door. For plenty of people, consoles will still be the best experience, the cleanest setup, and the easiest way to play. But for other people, flexibility will matter more than a single fixed box under the TV.
That’s the direction Layden is hinting at. Not collapse. Not replacement. Just evolution. And if you combine that with his defence of exclusives, you get a surprisingly coherent message: platform identity still matters, but access models may need to loosen if gaming wants to grow past its current ceiling.
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