We’ve yet to hear official confirmation from Sony and Microsoft about the Playstation 4 and the Xbox 720 but there are industry insiders already saying that the the console-gaming era is coming to a close and these could be the last we’ll see.

Phil Eisler, general manager of GeForce Grid Cloud Gaming at Nvidia, recently spoke with VentureBeat and he reveals his opinions about upcoming consoles, like the Xbox 720 and the Playstation 4:

“The thing about the consoles … they say this is the last console, and I am certainly a believer in that. The last one is almost 10 years old now in terms of the technology.

Eisler believes that cloud gaming is the way of the future. Skeptics will be quick to point out, however, that while cloud gaming has been steadily increasing in popularity, there are inherent issues with the system that could prevent it from completely taking off. Two that immediately come to mind are bandwidth consumption and latency. Eisler acknowledges both but believes that they’re on the way to solving them:

“The good thing about cloud gaming is it’s going to get better every year. One of the reasons we’re investing in it is we see that there are some issues today, but they’re all solvable, and they’re all moving in the right direction. Bandwidth is going up. The cost of server rooms is going down. We’re bringing latency down. The experience will just get better and better every year, to the point where I think it will become the predominant way that people play games.”

There’s a very good chance that cloud gaming will play a prominent role in the future of gaming but personally, I doubt that people will completely prefer it over physical consoles such as the Xbox 720 and the Playstation 4. What’s more likely to happen is that these two mediums will somehow combine or maybe complement each other. Sony looks like they already have plans of doing that with their purchase of Gaikai, a popular cloud gaming service provider, and Microsoft can easily leverage the infrastructure that they’ve built with Xbox Live to make sure that the Xbox 720 doesn’t fall behind.

Do you think console gaming is going the way of the dodo? Share your thoughts in the comments below!