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.