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Today John Riccitiello has predicted that emerging online-based gaming models will be the dominate force over traditional console based gaming models by next year.

“When people think of games they traditionally think of the Xbox, PlayStation and Wii,” Riccitiello told Reuters in a video interview.

“They forget about all these online services that are out there – subscription, microstransactions, games they find on Facebook or if they go to Pogo. If you add all that stuff up, it’s almost half of the industry now. It’s about 40-45 per cent.

“Next year it’s likely to be a larger share of the total industry and it’ll be bigger than the console games all put together.”

Although he does reassure that packaged gamers aren’t going anywhere.

“We’re the world’s leader in packaged goods games, we make more of them than anybody,” he added. “We’re not suggesting that business is going away but there’s this other thing that’s growing.

“It’s our goal for that business to be as important as, and over time maybe more important than, our packaged goods business.”