Why do people watch movies when books exist? They’re different mediums for delivering a story.

I saw this thread and assumed you were talking about actual walking simulators like Firewatch or Gone Home, ones that don’t really have any gameplay mechanics besides walking and interacting with objects. But from your comments you seem to be taking issue with games like God of War, The Last of Us and The Witcher which makes me think you’re a little misguided as to what those games really are. Those games have a story but that’s not the sole reason they’re popular. They’re all groundbreaking titles in their own right from a technical perspective, they just happen to have good stories because that makes them resonate with players even more.

It’s like how a movie with a bunch great fight scenes and no story isn’t going to resonate with audiences in the same way as a movie with great fight scenes and a story to tie it all together. It’s an important part of the immersive experience for a lot of people.

I think there’s always going to be a demand for games running on local hardware, in the same way there’s always demand for high end GPUs/monitors/etc even if it’s only a small proportion of gamers who are actually willing to fork out for it. So I don’t think PC or consoles are going anywhere.

I do think it’s inevitable that Cloud gaming will get bigger and bigger though. In fact I’m sure that over the next decade or so it’ll probably overtake the existing medium in terms of market share. The convenience and low cost of it will be enough to offset the drawbacks for a huge number of users.