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Livingstone: "Walled gardens" to make way for hardware agnosticism

Eidos president and gaming legend Ian Livingstone has tipped networked software platforms as the future of gaming, in place of hardware.

"Hardware manufacturers will finally realise the fact that manufacturing hardware is a mug's game," Livingstone said at the Launch Conference, as reported by GamesIndustry.

"It's all about intellectual property and I think you'll see IP moving across all platforms and all devices. Walled gardens will one day disappear."

Livingstone predicted a hardware agnostic future in which everyone uses portable devices hooked up to software platforms.

"The dominant platform for me is going to be mobile. A connected device allowing gaming on the move is absolutely, undoubtedly the future," he said.

"HTML 5 is going to create a real opportunity, a single platform with a single interface. That's going to be a bigger platform perhaps than Facebook."

As well as his significant achievements in video games, Livingstone co-founded Games Workshop and co-authored the first Fighting Fantasy Game.

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Brenna Hillier avatar

Brenna Hillier

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Based in Australia and having come from a lengthy career in the Aussie games media, Brenna worked as VG247's remote Deputy Editor for several years, covering news and events from the other side of the planet to the rest of the team. After leaving VG247, Brenna retired from games media and crossed over to development, working as a writer on several video games.

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