Instead they point to the longevity of legacy technology; the so-called Shock of the Old.
For example, in 1941 the German army invaded Russia with more horses than Napoleon used in 1812, while the USAF has just announced its main long range bomber will continue to be the B-52 Stratofortress. First flown in 1952, it's being upgraded to fly into the 2040s.
In that context, while boxed retail games will continue to decline as a proportion of the total games market, it will account for billions of dollars in revenue for years to come.
Another example is until mid-2012, Gameloft still generated the majority of its sales from Java games.
Got old game?
It's a long introduction to point out that streaming games services such as OnLive and Gaikai were never going to be the revolution many people expected, albeit not for the reasons many people thought.
Gamers have spent their lives with consoles and PCs. Sure, it's an expensive hobby, but the past 30 years has demonstrated the cost is not prohibitive.
In that context, having access to games as a service was technologically fascinating, while the immediate accessibility of play-on-demand remains a key motivation.
Will OnLive's dream be resurrected?
However, the games that were being made available as a service - the usual PC and console games - didn't play into the psychology of core gamers, who want the best experience without issues such as latency and video compression.
Pay to play
More importantly, if OnLive's travails are anything to go by, it wasn't clear how the business model, including massive start up costs in terms of server farms, not to mention manufacturing controllers and micro-boxes, would stack up.
Clearly, some of the original backers believe the company, its technology and business model can still find a sweetspot, which is what the current restructuring is designed to achieve.
Certainly, it will also be interesting to see how Sony deals with its $380 million acquisition of Gaikai.
But perhaps it's not the technology or the business model that's the issue.
Target audience
Putting the cart firmly behind the horse, having an audience you know wants to play your games and then using streaming technology to provide those games as a service seems like a much more sensible move.
Gaikai's vision is now more console-shaped
Presumably that's how Sony expects to use Gaikai; plugging it into its existing committed PlayStation audience.
And that's exactly what Big Fish Games is doing with its Unlimited service.
Currently live in the US, it provides some of company's portfolio of casual and hidden object games in (limited) free and $8 per month subscription options.
Obviously these games don't require anything like the same server costs or bandwidth to stream compared to Crysis: Warhead.
While Big Fish's position as the #1 casual publisher with its own traditional digital download distribution portal means it can funnel users between these two services, balancing volume with the revenue it receives.
Big Fish's ambitions are less framerate dependent
But even with an audience, it's not trivial to run many servers and deal with the customer support issues if - for whatever reasons - people aren't having the same experience they know they can get if they're playing the game locally.
So, while over the coming months and years, streaming game services will take their place in the games distribution market, they will be one of the available options.
The complexities of technology, business model and human psychology are not so easily disrupted into any single solution.
