It's certainly changing - shrinking in terms of real dollars - but the ability to enjoy the most graphically and auditory-rich interactive experiences in the comfort of your living room, on a 82-inch TV, in 7.1 surround using a physical controller, is not going anywhere.
The tablet and smartphone gaming business is exploding.
It's a disruptive change for the wider games industry but tablets and smartphone are not console replacements.
In the pocket
Sure, it can be argued that iPad has filled the gap in the current interregnum between PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 and whatever happens next. But until an Apple TV materialises out of vapourware, and Apple supports an official game controller, the iPad is not going to replace your console.
No, the disruption we're experiencing is that smartphone and tablet games are accounting for some of the time we spent playing on console.
They're also accounting for some of the time we spent watching TV, sitting in planes, trains, automobiles, also outside the dressing room while our beloved tried on new clothes, and in the Starbucks queue.
Because we always have our phones with us, that's a lot of time throughout the day. It's also a lot of time in the evening because our tablets are always on.
And that's why developers and publishers shouldn't be trying to ape console-quality experiences.
Levels of success
The temptation is that as the available processing power become ever more console-like, so console-quality games become ever more easy to make for smartphone and tablets.
Apple's not helping the situation demoing games such as Real Racing 3 during the iPhone 5 announcement, either.
Real Racing 3 - it's console quality
Sure, it looks amazing, jaw-dropping amazing but it's not a game that will be particularly successful.
You're likely laughing at me now, right? Real Racing 3 won't be successful...
No. It won't be particularly successful.
All comparative
In fact, to get you really rolling around on the floor laughing, I'd similarly argue tablet/phone-only franchises such as Infinity Blade have not been particularly successful.
Epic announced it's been more profitable per man-month of development than Gears of War, likely generating over $25 million of net revenue to the company.
But the success we're comparing to is Rage of Bahamut, Kingdoms of Camelot, DragonVale or CSR Racing-levels of success - that is longterm success, in the top 10 of the top grossing charts for months, generating $5 million per week.
DragonVale is graphically simple and colourful. It's not console-quality. It's been in the top 10 US top grossing charts for 1 year.
Console-like games on tablets and smartphone just don't monetise at that level.
In a rut?
They're almost always focused on male pursuits - cars, swords - often don't support older hardware, and most importantly require a premium payment.
Once you purchase them, the content is quickly used up, and probably not enough of your friends have bought the game to create a deep, social community. The game won't be updated regularly either.
Instead, the developer will attempt to drive demand by occasionally dropping the price.
In this way, even games such as Infinity Blade, which are designed from the ground up for touchscreen and bite-sized play, don't truly engage with the mass audience.
And that's why developers - even developers as smart as Firemonkeys - and publishers - even publishers as big as EA Mobile - should think very carefully before greenlighting and making such games.
They're expensive to develop, rely on a first week media splash, only appeal to a limited section of the market - something further limited by their pricing model - and it's hard to sustain any success beyond a couple of months, at least without dropping the price, and hence their profitability.
In fact, these games demonstrate many of the problems currently facing the console business, while possessing few of the advantages of the smartphone and tablet business.
Still, they do look nice, don't they?
Infinity Blade (top) is a successful game, but its chart position in the top grossing chart quickly becomes driven by - and eventually limited by - price cuts. Meanwhile the iOS version of Kingdoms of Camelot has been much more successful, despite being graphically inferior.
