Topic: What is the future of gaming?

Hi, everyone! After a month playing PS4, it got me thinking about what does the future reserves for us... Don't take me wrong, I love my PS4, I think it's the best videogame I've ever had, it's just that it doesn't feel exactly new. Sure, the visuals are great, stories are getting better, performance is better, controls are tighter, but the experience remains pretty much the same. It's still great, though, more of the same when the same is good makes sense, but there's only so much people can take before they lose interest.

On PS1, we had the jump to 3D visuals, there was a lot of creativity, developers were still figuring out what to do with the tech. On PS2, they pretty much figured it out, we had tighter controls for 3D games, suddenly we could easily control the camera and immerse ourselves in great looking games. On PS3, games became way more cinematic, with actors playing characters using motion capture, screenwriters dealing with the script and most games became open-world to increase the immersion. PS4, though, feels like PS3 with way better visuals and technologies, but it's still open-world cinematic experiences... I mean, look at Horizon: Zero Dawn, one of the greatest games of this gen. It's an awesome game, pretty much perfect in every way, but don't you feel like you've already played it before? It reminds me of Tomb Raider, AC and a bunch of other games put together to create something amazing, just not unique.

What do you think? Where is gaming gonna go from here?

The sane way phones and PCs went. Moores Law.

As processing power increases the processor gets smaller.

Phones got smaller.
Laptops got smaller.

In the modern world once you hit the graphical ceiling you need to be then able to accomodate a modern world. Content at any time anywhere.

That's what PSNOW is aiming for. Thats why Netflix does so well.

Gaming needs to change with how it conceptualjses delivery and practices over performance. PS Now, Game Pass and Nintendo Switch are all steps in that direction.

Change how and where people consume their media.

@renankj The biggest change between the PS3 and PS4 is things like lighting, shadows, particles, stream loading (so open worlds are 'open' with no loading screens - unless you fast travel), improved texture quality and higher polygons. We have also had VR and HDR as well as a 'jump' in resolution. 1080p may not sound much more than 720p but its more than twice the number of pixels, more than double the amount the PS3 could render at its best. Not only that the worlds that are created have much better weather effects - Horizon may feel like other games but I doubt any PS3 game had 'accurate' weather patterns based on clouds, humidity etc and rain that actually forms puddles that evaporate. AI is more complex too and I am not just referring to the enemies. In these open worlds, there are more wildlife - birds, insects etc that are AI controlled and behave as these animals would. In the PS3 era, they used 'sound' to create the impression you were in a area filled with wildlife but we are seeing more and more games with that wildlife actually visible.

Its come to something when facial animations, lip synch etc are now being criticised if they are not spot on. LA Noire was built on the premise you could read peoples expressions etc as part of being the detective yet the technology wasn't 'good' enough. Just look at the facial animations of Uncharted 4. ME:A doesn't compare favourably with games like Horizon (which also had a few criticisms - compared to U4 at least) but when you look at ME3, the animations and faces then were very similar to ME:A.

The next Project Cars has rain the builds up in accurate ways around its circuits, drains in accurate ways, tyres that 'dry' the circuit in accurate ways - even mud (if you go off the track) will be on the track and as that dries, react like it would to a real situation.

The future is most likely going to be towards more realism - not just in people, but everything from lighting, shadows etc to physics, AI etc, to weather and its impact. All at higher resolutions so much more detail - no jaggies or pop-ins - and probably in VR too.

Well, I'm a bit of a cynic so I'd say the future of gaming is filled with companies milking every last penny out of franchises with sequels and remasters on top of them coming up with more ways to sneak microtransactions in and hold back chunks of games as DLC. Companies always seem to try to chase the mass market, but, as seems to be happening now, the mass market will change where it puts its money on a whim. This leads to people who class gaming as a hobby being left with a load of cash cow titles to choose from they don't really want and the people the games were aimed at no where to be seen.

My less bleak answer is that, to keep gaming fresh and interesting, the future of gaming is in perfecting a technology like VR. If we aren't to grow tired of the medium then we need to have new experiences that amount to more than extra resources put into a graphics engine. By truly altering the way we experience content even an old overused gaming type can seem new and exciting.

the way it's going the future of gaming will no longer involve consoles, instead we will have streaming machines or companies like Sony making the PlayStation brand like steam and being an independent P.C publisher/storefront all apart from Nintendo who has merged their handheld and home systems into one

basically it becomes a P.C and handheld market (with xbox anywhere and PSNow on P.C and the Nintendo Switch this seems more than likely to me)

worse case scenario mobiles take over and the entire infrastructure collapses under the weight of mediocre free to play games, pay to win games and crappy knock offs

@Dichotomy My opinion is strongly that companies will only "milk" the audience as long as their is a demand for what they are selling. Who cares if yearly COD/Fifa/BF/Assassins Creed and so on isn't for you specifically? While people are buying it in the hundreds of thousands why should they change their method?

Of course, if gaming went down that path entirely I'd give up, like I think a huge number of people would, so I reckon it's ultimately consumer led. Even though it might not seem like it sometimes the practices that we don't like to see (day 1 DLC, microtransactions etc.) are slowly changing as the industry learns how to adapt. I think it's pretty cool really.

In regards to the future of gaming - streaming, streaming and streaming, and no more CeX. Like it or not.

@kyleforrester87 I agree that companies will only go where the money is, but the problem is that by chasing the largest market and mostly neglecting some of the traditional, but smaller markets they leave themselves open to a shift in consumerism ruining them. Or, to use a popular phrase, they are putting all their eggs in one basket. We are already seeing bigger franchises under performing this generation and a general message that the console user base is diminishing.

Having said that, I'm not saying it is all doom and gloom, we've had an excellent start to this year with probably the largest number of games released in a long time that I actually want to play. The indie scene is pretty strong for the most part too and has become pretty much the go to place for a number of genres the bigger companies rarely touch any more.

I do feel though at a point in the not too distant past that there was a shift in the way a lot of businesses operated (not just gaming) that went from 'if we make something great for the customer we will make money' to 'how can we maximise the amount of money we can get off our customers?'. In both cases they are looking at making money, but the latter case is less concerned with the customer's overall experience.

@FullbringIchigo Why won't Microsoft and Sony make a handheld system? I think that's definitely the way Sony is going in the distant future. Streaming services are nice, but they don't make as much money as a video game system does. It's in their interest to keep their current userbase playing on their systems, so I don't think video game systems are going anywhere, at least not in the foreseeable future.

@Octane You reckon? Most consoles are sold at a loss. It'd make more sense for them to invest money in powerful machines to stream content out and the network infrastructure to support it. If they can cut back on design, manufacture and shipping costs they will.

Streaming is clearly the future, it's an absolute necessity for Sony and MS to adapt otherwise a new competitor will rise up in the future and take the crown. Look what happened to the likes of Blockbuster once Love Film and Netflix took off. Blockbuster should have seen it coming.

Ultimately a big publisher like EA or Activision could decide "screw Sony and MS!" and set up a streaming service all on their own. In fact, EA access could be them testing the waters for that now. Sony will be alive to this fact, but ultimately we shouldn't take the big players current dominance for granted.

they did twice the PSP and the PSVita and they both pretty much failed

@kyleforrester87 License fees? Then there's the PS+ people pay for on top of their games. And I wouldn't be surprised if the hardware was profitable by now. I think there's more to that though. It's not just ''Netflix is popular and the same will happen with video games''. I find it difficult to compare the two. If you want to see newest films, you're still going to the cinema, and you can still buy your own films. Plus, a ticket, a film or a Netflix subscription are all much cheaper than the equivalents for gaming. I pay for a Netflix subscription, even though I don't use it on a weekly or even monthly basis, simply because it's relatively cheap. Don't know if I would do that for a game streaming service. I think that several things have to drastically change in order for streaming services to be more profitable than the current set-up. And this is not even taking the user's internet connection and server costs for the providers into account.

@FullbringIchigo PSP sold 80 million units though...

Anyway, I'm not talking about a standard handheld system, I should've clarified that. I was talking about a portable console similar to the Nintendo Switch. With diminishing returns we will get to a point when more powerful hardware won't make a difference anymore. @BLP_Software has a good point, the hardware can still become smaller at that point. Why not make it portable too in that case?

@Octane oh yeah perhaps but would they be able to break into that market is the thing,by the time something like that comes along who knows what the state of the gaming market will be

but P.C has been around for a long time, MS have pretty much moved back to it for their main market, hence the XBOX Play Anywhere system where any XB1 game you buy you will get a P.C version free and with PSNow being released on P.C i'm just saying it seems more likely that is where they will go

plus Sony used to make Laptops so they could always start again and have PSNow built in

@Octane Yes, well I'm talking, what, 50-75 years into the future. It might be difficult to see now but as I see it all current evidence points toward streaming being the future - the transition is well underway with books, music, TV and film after a mere decade of technological improvements, and this is despite there still being the desire to hold onto this physical media. It's only a matter of time as network infrastructure improves, costs reduce and new competitors enter the ring.

The CD collectors of the 90's wouldn't believe how quickly that industry changed if you went back and tried to tell them!

Gaming's Future;

Games become valueless, practically every game becomes available on a big streaming service or subscription model. Almost every game will feature micro transactions with more unfinished games in the wild on smaller budgets. Games that stick will be updated regularly, games that don't will remain unfinished. Everything will be online essential. The big publishers will be pushing multi-player primarily. A few niche developers will cater for the older school crowd and single player games but they will struggle to be profitable. Hardware will be just as important, but will change rapidly, even more so than today. Hard copies of games will be akin to music and vinyl in the present, only select titles will be released for enthusiasts. The majority of us will be using Led based broadband so download speeds will be stupid quick but that will cutoff a proportion of gamers who don't have that service.

So interesting to read your opinions! =)

I'm not sold on the idea of streaming games as the future, though, it's way more problematic than streaming films/tv shows and I'm not sure people would be interested by it (after all, every year games become more expensive to make, how much would they need to charge for such a service? A huge part of the appeal for streaming is low price). The idea of PC as the future has been around since ever, but consoles are still quite strong, I don't see them fading away for PCs, just evolving to something.

I'm more worried about the evolution of games, though, not sure how or when will developers try to bring new experiences through software instead of hardware-dependant stuff (like VR, AR or motion control) - so far not many things stayed longer than a gen or two, analog sticks, shoulder buttons and vibration come to mind as the few things that stayed (and they are all related to traditional controllers).

Thing is, as I see it there is no reason for them not to stream content, providing the network infrastructure exists.

What benefit is it to Sony to have to design, manufacture, ship and sell new hardware - paying through the nose and dealing with all the middle men in between - only to have to do it all again a few years later when they could put a percentage of that into ugly servers in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, with the added benefit being that you can't go out and sell your product to a second hand gaming store. Same goes for publishers and developers - if they can cut costs and not have to be concerned with second hand sales why wouldn't they want to go down this route?

So really it's just about waiting for the network speeds to get there, which they will. In the mean time I suspect we'll transition more into buying games digitally and playing them locally until physical starts becoming redundant (like the switch from CD to MP3) and then streaming will begin to take off more.

And let's face it - network speeds WILL get there, and if Sony arnt leading the way with this some other company will be, and they'll get a big slice of the pie unless Sony are able to get everything exclusive to there physical systems.

As far as actual games go.. who the hells knows haha

@kyleforrester87. 'What benefit is it to Sony to have to design, manufacture, ship and sell new hardware - paying through the nose and dealing with all the middle men in between'

Profit

Sony have been a hardware manufacturer for generations and hardware is Sonys bread and butter. They had it tough a few years ago with phones, music players and media divisions failing. But it doesn't change what they are.

For all the negativity and doom and gloom this thread appears to be going, it seems that people have forgotten its not all big franchise game releases. We have had games like Destiny, Horizon:ZD, the Division, Overwatch, Watchdogs, Evil Within, Alien: Isolation (maybe not a 'new; franchise but unlike any Alien game before it), Days Gone, Spider-Man (not the first Spider-man game but first by Insomniac), Sea of Thieves, Quantum Break, The Order, Knack, Sunset Overdrive, Titanfall etc - all new AAA games/franchises that launched this generation. Its not all been remasters and 'old' or established franchises.

For all the talk about 'streaming' or 'digital', whilst these maybe increasing in popularity, physical is still by far the most popular format - 70%+ of games sold are sold as physical games. Publishers want physical releases too - the pre-order - especially for special/limited editions are important to them. Bluray drives are important too - look at the criticism the Pro got for only having a standard BD in it.

As for streaming, MS recently announced a 'digital' service - similar to now but downloads and plays the game on the console. That is a MUCH better system. The service maybe a 'test bed' for going 'digital' as you can get a discount if you want to buy the game digitally - more of a promotion to get the profits and cut out the 2nd hand market in my eyes but I can't see it replacing Physical entirely.

Even Vinyl records are still being made and sold, CD's, DVD's (yes DVD's) and Blurays are still being sold as are books - despite all the digital options. Maybe digital has overtaken in some of those markets but there are still a fairly sizeable market for those that want to buy physical.

Maybe in 20-30yrs we could see digital being the most popular format for buying games but I bet there will be a sizeable number of gamers that want to buy physical copies.

@themcnoisy But could they justify this high cost process in the future at a time when competitors are selling hardware (such as today's Amazon Firestick) designed to get people streaming their games from powerful servers at a fraction of a cost?

Why am I going to buy a £100-£300 blurry player and £10-£15 discs when I can stream 4K Netflix? Granted I buy a few Blurays but I have over 20 times more DVDs.. that's the transition in action IMO.

Maybe there will always be the enthusiasts, like those who still buy records. But even then as this becomes more "specialist" the price reflects this... it ain't a cheap way to listen to music.

But it's only profitable for Sony to make hardware until it isn't lol. I don't think it's a given for them. Hopefully they don't either, hence initiatives like PS Now..

I guess I can only assume the future by looking at how my own consumption habits have changed over the past 20 years. I appreciate other people might have a different view depending upon how they currently listen to music/watch movies and buy games etc