Square Enix Chief Yoichi Wada has revealed to MCV in a recent interview that a major change will take place within the gaming industry in the next decade which could make way for major advances but which may also see the death of traditional media and the console.

“In ten years’ time a lot of what we call ‘console games’ won’t exist,” said Wada, who heads up one of the largest publishing companies in the gaming community.

Wada also warned that “all the distributors and sales firms will suffer a big negative impact”  when media services are transferred from disk based offerings to digital – allowing users to access all content and games via the internet.

“Somewhere around 2005 the console manufacturers’ strategy shifted,” he said.

“In the past the platform was hardware, but it has switched to the network. A time will come when the hardware isn’t even needed anymore.

“With that, any kind of terminal becomes a potential platform on which games can be played – that’s exponential growth in the potential of gaming. The potential size of the market is enormous.”

According to Wada both Microsoft and Sony are already beginning to prepare for the shift with as yet unannounced offerings.