With a new series of console wars looming in the coming year, there will more than a dozen different platforms to play games on. Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney believes that number is way too high, and the industry is reaching a point where there are too many platforms. Speaking at the 2012 DICE conference, Sweeney said, “Over time these platforms will be whittled down to a competing set of platforms to maybe three winners worldwide across everything - computers, game platforms, smartphones… We should expect a lot of consolidation here and winners and losers according to who picks the right directions and executes successfully."

In addition to home consoles, Sweeney believes the iPad and mobile devices will factor into these new platform wars, and thinks we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible with these technologies. Though Sweeney thinks a consolidation is coming, he’s got high hopes for the future of the industry. “I see a bright future for technology and its implications on games,” he said. “The ability of game developers to exploit another thousand-fold increase in computing power on future generations of platforms. Some of it will be consoles, some of it PC and some of it tablets. The form factor we can't predict, but the opportunity is there. Our industry's brightest days are yet to come."

Is there enough room for all these gaming devices, or is Sweeney right? Will there be big changes coming the next few years in how we play games?

SOURCE: Sweeney: There are too many platforms on the market [GamesIndustry]