The future of gaming

okay, to start off just yesterday i went over my man's house to pass some time.so he told me yo,play MLB:the show with me so i said sure and when he turned on the tv and i saw the graphics i was like HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!! the graphics look so realistic i literally felt that i was in a actual baseball stadium.it just blew my mind away.its only been about 25 years that video games have been around and in that amount of time games have gone from 8bit to 1080P. so, just imagine what i could be like in another 25 years or so?so what do you think? i cant really put my mind on it just to think of how it would be like.and this is just that i saw the regular version now just imagine the 3-D version,wow! i wonder how that would be like.
oh yeah,just to put it out there. sony is always one step ahead of its competition.no matter what any xbox fanboy says. blu-ray, playstation move which uses both a camera and controller unlike kinect and wii that just use one of the two, six axis controller , and now 3-D gaming. what will sony come out with next? man just thinking of all of that makes me wanna get sell my xbox and stay with my playstation

Yeah I see 3D going to hit main stream gaming pretty soon here too. But I don't see any new consoles coming out because I think they have REALLY nothing to add on, and with the tough economy, why not build up what you've already got? I was actually about to ditch my PS3 for a 360, I miss my friends... I can't play epic single player games while bored to death in the silence of my room.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwgu7n_8RY4 BEHOLD THE FUTURE OF GAMING! also called microsofts death.

I actually have my doubts that 3D is going to really penetrate the market, especially when it comes to video game development. At the very least, I believe that to be true while the global economy is so weak. Developing a game is already a multi-million dollar project where returns are stagnating or getting less against the cost of production. Developers would be foolish to waste money on something that may turn out to only be a fad that might disappear as soon as it appeared.

A lot of analysts, Pachter comes to mind since he is so popular, seem to think that the video game industry is infallible and wasn't directly affected by the weakening global economy, but oh boy were they all so very very wrong. Granted, projections at first didn't indicate sales being affected at first, but now they are. Nintendo Wii and DS sales are plummeting (of course one could argue that is because penetration has just become too high), PSP sales are bombing, 360 sales are evening out, and PS3 is barely making headway over the rest. All projected to fall substantially after Holiday 2010.

I have to hand it to Nintendo again, they seem to have picked the absolute perfect time to gamble and release a new system. The 3DS might just be the thing needed to get Nintendo sales back to where they were before. Otherwise they will continue to fall at sale ratios lower than the PS3 and 360 for the first time this generation.

Anyway, I guess I'm trying to say it's more pertinent to discuss the future of gaming when developers have a safer environment where they can make more risk-free choices.



I wouldn't go that far. I do doubt that Kinect will go places, but it certainly won't affect Microsoft negatively aside from a loss of sales related to Kinect and Kinect related products. I think both Microsoft and Sony have made a mistake trying to infringe on Nintendo this late in the game. I congratulate them on trying to take Nintendo on, but they are far too late for the party.

Next generation should be more interesting. Unless one of the three has a hidden surprise up their sleeves, then next generation should be much more balanced. Nintendo will not likely dominate, and hopefully neither will Microsoft or Sony. The more direct the competition, the better it is for the consumers.

-kinda stopped reading when you said 'patcher' dont like that dude.
-but then I continued since you respond to me lol
-nintendo is still printing money,but it prints slower.Besides nintendo has been owning the sales for idk how long,but I know its really long XD
-Im quite confident for the 3ds too 'stick its penis' in the market.

Future of Gaming huh? Maybe in the far far future we will have game system is the same with .hack game. If that really happen it will really rock my ass.

Fuck that shit, Kinect(Natal sounded way better) has some great ideas, but I really don't think it'll sell. Also, developers need to wake up and realise that 3D is fucked up, and that we don't want it. If it's without the glasses/special 3D TVs, then fine, we'll take it. But not now, when it's so goddamn expensive.

I agree. The best advancement would be cheaper prices.

Just so you know the core product of Microsoft isn't gaming.
So we won't be seeing Microsoft dieing anytime soon, we may see them lose some of their grip on the market. But death, no.

You're obviously not that old. Video games have been around A LOT LONGER than twenty-five years. You must not have ever put in hardcore time on a Coleco or an Atari predating 8 bit gaming. Gaming, believe it or not, is now over forty years old. Used to graphics meant NOTHING. Now every young person on YouTube for some reason thinks a game with year old graphics is shit and isn't worth anything.

Sorry. Not meaning to ramble. I just think nowadays people put WAY TOO MUCH emphasis on graphics - and if that's the direction that gaming is going in, it's the wrong way.

I agree with the above that prices are starting to become very high, but this is to me only because gaming companies are putting in quite too much time developing games that get boring rather quick. One of the original things that turned me on to CD based games when they first started going mainstream is they were a lot cheaper than cartridges. Most of you might remember that SNES and Genesis games back in the day were frequently $60-$70 new. I remember when Super Mario 3 came out on the NES, it was a big deal, and if I remember right ended up costing over $60. CD based media when it was introduced was a cheaper alternative - and while not up to the same standards as cartridges, it quickly surpassed such media. However, now gaming companies are starting to put a ton of development into games, and it's quickly driving the prices back up again.

I remember that when Working Designs was translating Growlanser II and III, they wanted to split the games. However, because those games were running on PS1 technology and by themselves were too short, Sony forced Working Designs to combine or not publish. In a way, gaming has a catch 22 there - you want to create something that is interesting and not causing a lot of boredom, yet it can't be too short as to make it seem like you did not get your money's worth.

Starting from the beginning of this generation of gaming, graphical advancements have become only marginally better. There is a very visible exponential decay in how graphics improve. Perhaps next generation there will be more advanced lighting and character models, but these advancements are only steps now, instead of the "leaps" they where from, say the NES to the SNES to the N64. Think about how steadily the advancements from one generation to the next have declined, and then try to imagine how much more it will have declined in 5, 10, or 20 years.

"Generations" will expand, as they have already. Again taking an example from the past, the SNES, perhaps the most beloved system of gamers, had a life span of 6 years. Currently, the Xbox 360 is over 5 years old, and we have heard nothing about a replacement for any of the current generation consoles (release is usually around 2 years after announcement).

Handheld systems will probably have the largest change from generation to generation. The 3DS (rumored to be as powerful as the Gamecube) and the PSP2 (rumored to be as powerful as the Xbox 360) each are substantial advancements over their predecessors. Digital distribution will be more important than ever for the handhelds, and I foresee heavier implementation of digital content for all systems, both consoles and handhelds. Digital distribution is the largest contribution to the industry this generation, and it's use will be broadened and advanced in the future.

Though this sounds incredibly obvious, modern video games are incredibly time consuming and complex to develop. Huge teams consisting of hundreds of developers are being tasked with making the AAA games we see today, and it will take them 2 to 3 years to craft what you see. In the past, we have seen several "mainstream" games being released each fiscal year, and I believe this development template will change, as it has started to already. There will be a larger quantity of small games that are released (ones for the iPhone, digitally distributed, etc), but as for high grade games, we may see a rather steady decline in their production numbers. The studio Double Fine is an excellent example of this. Their previous project was Brutal Legend, a AAA game, and now they are releasing smaller games, such as Costume Quest, more frequently.

You may have noticed my emphasis on digital distribution throughout my post, and I would like to expound a bit. A general swing towards digitally distributed content has arose for all media, including music, movies, and games. Blockbuster has all but closed it's doors entirely because of Netflix. Steam is the largest distributor for PC games. Gamestop is suffering in sales because of one form of digital distribution or another. iTunes has become the norm for purchasing music. This all lends credence towards the belief that people what their content faster, with less hassle. Digital distribution also cuts out the middle man (Gamestop, for example), which lowers the prices of games and removes the need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to manufacture the products being sold.

As for my prediction on how "games will be in 25 years", I see a large market of smaller, quick games released solely through digital distribution, with 4 or 5 big name games actually being released, and those will more than likely be digitally distributed as well.