Future of Gaming – Where are we headed?

by Andreas Rothbauer on January 27th, 2009 at 9:31 pm EDT - 2,139 views

In these tough economic times when many people use the entertainment industry as an escape from the brutal reality and are looking for affordable family entertainment I thought it was time to reflect on the gaming industry and where we are going.  I am sure many of you have probably grown up with the NES and other 8 bit consoles – so have I. Looking back at those days of playing the Super Marios, Zeldas and constantly blowing on the dusty cartridges to get them to work makes me miss my first gaming experiences and the epic struggle of trying to play or should I even dare say beat some of those superhard video games from the early 90s. However, I loved every minute of it and doing it with friends were some of the best times I’ve ever had.

Today, video games take on a new but just as important of a role in our lives as adults. As mentioned before, money is hard to come by in this day and age and many people don’t even have jobs anymore. Still, families are seeking entertainment and the unlikely suspect of a video game console has stepped up to deliver just that. What was once a geeky and negatively looked upon activity has spread into nearly every living room and TV show in the United States and even the entire world – newly elevated to pop-culture: the Nintendo Wii.

The current video games Top Sellers list at Amazon holds 8 Wii related products in the Top 10. It’s a true phenomenon. Who would have thought that Nintendo would make such a comeback, they are on track to become the best selling console EVER. Even more impressive (and Genius), it has brought gaming to the Soccer moms, grandparents, made it ‘not-so-embarrassing’ to say: “I play video games” and reinvented the casual genre single handidly.

Looking at Nintendo’s sales numbers for the past two months, they are still selling a baffling 2 million plus Wii’s and Ds’s in the past two months, amazing. What does this mean for the future of gaming? For once, regular non-gamers understand that our entertainment genre is more than just a violent GTAIV-esque blood and kill fest which leads teens to kill themselves and their parents sort of horror story material or World of Warcraft supergeeks who haven’t seen the sun in a week because they want to get to level 80 with the Death Knight. Ultimately the industry will grow and surpass the hardcore gamer’s market preset boundaries of Gears of War 2 and Halo 3.

To the people who think this is a fad and will go away, I don’t think so, not anytime soon! Some things change the way people look at the world and the Wii is such a thing. Personally, I will not be purchasing a Wii or Ds as it’s not my bag but hey, I can see the appeal and so did another 43+ million people so far. It also means that the gaming scene will see a lot more casual games and arcade games as already seen on the PSN with Pixel Junk and XBLA’s Braid and The Maw, not to mention the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series. Purchasing a Wii or Xbox 360 Arcade which are geared and priced towards the casual market are exactly what families want, an affordable investment that will last for a long, long time and even bring the family together as opposed to their child locking into himself into a room and play Call of Duty for 5 hours failing algebra.

That is one aspect of it, the other is the ‘no matter what happens Hardcore Gamer’ side of the equation.

This is the part which is most exciting to me. The Wii is a machine which uses outdated graphics and a decent enough gimmick revolutionary device to lure people in to seal the deal, that’s fine and I support it because not everyone wants next-gen hardware. I am different. To me it is fascinating where video games are headed and what a sweet future it is indeed. Once the recession passed and consumers, developers, publishers and the rest of the world start spending money again we will see some amazing new consoles/devices and technology utilizing speedier Internet and new ideas.

Not sure if anyone’s heard of it but gaming in the cloud is an idea which has been floating around for ages and is coming closer to reality than ever. If you haven’t heard of it, let me explain. Imagine a world where you do not need to purchase an expensive Playstation 4 or Xbox 720 but rather a small top box placed on the living room multimedia shelf next to your OLED TV. This box will be connected via a superfast broadband connection which the US still lacks but is going to improve as the demand here increases – to a server which holds all the content accessible (games, music, videos, etc.) through a yearly subscription of some sort. This content will then either be downloaded onto the top box’s hard drive which is very cheap compared to a console or stored withing the server. No more discs and expensive retail prices for our beloved games. The same idea goes for PCs. A good example is Valve Software who is already doing game saves and data through the steam cloud. The best part? Games will not be limited to the hardware specs of the console as it is today but rather games will be able to evolve and improve as the server/supercomputer improves.

The same goes for portable devices. Imagine playing a full blown video game on your iphone. This way your gaming device may it be a PC, a console or a portable will not need the expensive hardware to run the games, increasing playing time and eliminating overheating issues. the best and simplest way to compare it is browsing a movie via the internet as you have done here on this site. Sure, this service will probably come after the next generation of consoles and might have some DRM issues but ultimately this is bound to happen. While the completion of gaming in the cloud is still at least 5 years away from complete implementation you will hear much more about this topic in the future. One thing will become rather widespread more quickly and that is digital distribution of video games as Steam, the PSN and XBLA are already doing.

What are your thoughts?