Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dutchling]

I'm hopefully playing Warcraft 4 by then

[MorleyDev]

The Social Media bubble will have crashed. We shall enter into a golden era.

Also there will be cake for all.

[MrWiggles]

Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void still won't be out.
Neither will Half Life 3.
----

Does it matter really what the future for PC gaming is?

PC Gaming folks tend to think of themselves as this unique playing platform that somehow magically isolated from other platform for gaming. Which it isn't. Consoles, PC's, and mobile devices gaming are all same darn things, just viewed a little bit differently.

The big thing, I would say with PC gaming, is Transgaming. Being able to take your games with you, via mobile devices, and/or have causal browser/app games that effect the PC game. A lot more interconnectivity between causal and general gaming, and it's probably going to get more apped focus.

I think we're going to see the MMO market, be virtually dead with only a few standout games.

I think we're going to be seeing a higher number of microtransactions, and DLC, allowing us to pay for the part of the game we like, allowing us to pay a lot more for the games that we really like.

I think we're going to be seeing AAA titles be released for free, with the business model of earning their money via microtransactions and DLC.

I think streaming and broad band infrastructure will come into it's adolescence and maybe even starting to mature, which will render what you play your games on, nearly moot.

The Social Media bubble will have crashed. We shall enter into a golden era.

Also there will be cake for all.

If mobile gaming suffer a crash, then chances are all of the gaming industry will be suffering the same crash as well.

[MorleyDev]

The thing with mobile gaming is it'll never be more profitable than PC and console gaming. The investment is lower, but the pay-off is lower too. Look at the profits from Call of Duty and compare them with the profits for say...Angry Birds. The latter loses by a huuuuge margin.

People act like mobile gaming is becoming a dominant platform for massive profits for publishers to seek. It's not.

Likewise the idea of being able to stream any game to it isn't going to become massive until internet on mobile devices becomes fast and free. At the moment it's only free if your contract says it is. Otherwise, you pay out of the nose. A lot of people are not willing pay £20 a month on top of all the other bills for a phone.

[kaijyuu]

I just hope graphics reach a point where almost everyone collectively says "good enough" and we start focusing on selling games based on their gameplay and storytelling merits, not their eye candy. That'll certainly happen in my lifetime (supposing I don't die tomorrow) but I'm hoping under 20 years. It already happened with sound; systems and games once advertised their wondrous improvements in audio quality until it reached a point where no one cares if it gets better (barring some gimmicky stuff).

[Johuotar]

Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void still won't be out.
Neither will Half Life 2 episode 3.

FTFY

[MrWiggles]

The thing with mobile gaming is it'll never be more profitable than PC and console gaming. The investment is lower, but the pay-off is lower too. Look at the profits from Call of Duty and compare them with the profits for say...Angry Birds. The latter loses by a huuuuge margin.

People act like mobile gaming is becoming a dominant platform for massive profits for publishers to seek. It's not.

It doesn't need to out strip it in profit, nor does it need to become dominant inside the gaming industry. It just needs to remain stable, and viable.

Mobile Gaming has some very clear facts that cant be ignored. They have /the/ largest market of potencial players. PC (for gaming) and Consoles will always have a smaller market. It'll also have a much higher barrier of entry.

Mobile Gaming overal cost less to develop and publish for. Ergo, having a mobile app that can help you on your console/pc game is a very low cost way to have add on sales. And if you can get your friends to play those games to help you, if you can get your Mom to play a facebook game that helps you in COD or WoW, then that could bring gaming into something much grander, and have much more reach then it does now.

And all in all, it'll justs expands the market for games even further.
----

Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void still won't be out.
Neither will Half Life 2 episode 3.

FTFY

I'm pretty sure Valve has abandoned the Episodic model, like pretty much everyone else. Im also pretty sure Valve has just bumped HL2:Ep2 to HL3.

[MorleyDev]

To be honest, when I said it'd crash I'm actually expecting it to be a casualty.  I'm suspecting the entire mobile phone market will crash at some point. But that's just a suspicion. And probably something like wishful thinking that people will stop buying into Apple's "get the new golden iCock 4653" -_-

Social media is more likely to crash. That's why I edited mobile gaming after I posted, whilst decided to leave social media in. I'm gonna bring popcorn.

[alway]

The final death of dedicated gaming consoles will occur. To create a console superior to the PC's price-performance by a margin large enough to justify their existence requires the companies creating them to lose money in the process of developing and manufacturing the devices. The bulk quantities mean they can make them a bit cheaper than a comparable PC, but not much.
What we know of the next generation of consoles is that they will be, at best, comparable to a good PC at the date of release. Probably a better price-performance than a PC at that time, but not superior to a high end PC, nor will it probably be able to beat the price-performance of a PC a year or two after it is released; and that's without taking upgrades to older machines into account, which would likely beat price-performance from the starting gate. Companies don't seem to be investing as much effort into the old 'console wars,' which may well end up undermining the viability of consoles as a gaming platform. Especially in an age in which gaming can be done nearly anywhere on nearly any device.

Over the next decade, I would also predict the rise and fall of 'gamification.' This may end up hardening people against the sort of psychological tricks used by such systems, which can only be a good thing for those of us who prefer our games to have a lot of depth to them. Or it may not. But I can say that it is highly unlikely that the current trends towards gamification will continue; there's only so far it can be pushed before people adapt to it and it stops being as effective.

Mobile platforms will also become increasingly important. It's an entirely different market segment that remains largely untapped; though much of that will remain untapped until people figure out how to effectively make use of mobile devices' pros and cons. The way people interact with the devices varies from one mobile device to the next; and are certainly much different from their interaction with a PC, and as such the way games are built for the systems must be different.

As for the PC market, I don't see it changing too much. The larger size of a PC makes it cheaper than a comparable mobile device (including laptops) because that larger size allows for more bulky, lower tech, older and, most importantly, cheaper components than devices designed to take up minimum amounts of space. So I don't really see desktop PCs going anywhere within a decade (though given a couple decades, that will probably change to at least some extent).
Related article w/ NVIDIA's take on things: http://techgage.com/article/nvidia_talks_pc_gaming_trends/

[Siquo]

My simulation will be finished and I'll be locked in a room playing it by myself for the rest of eternity.

[fenrif]

The final death of dedicated gaming consoles will occur. To create a console superior to the PC's price-performance by a margin large enough to justify their existence requires the companies creating them to lose money in the process of developing and manufacturing the devices. The bulk quantities mean they can make them a bit cheaper than a comparable PC, but not much.
What we know of the next generation of consoles is that they will be, at best, comparable to a good PC at the date of release. Probably a better price-performance than a PC at that time, but not superior to a high end PC, nor will it probably be able to beat the price-performance of a PC a year or two after it is released; and that's without taking upgrades to older machines into account, which would likely beat price-performance from the starting gate. Companies don't seem to be investing as much effort into the old 'console wars,' which may well end up undermining the viability of consoles as a gaming platform. Especially in an age in which gaming can be done nearly anywhere on nearly any device.

People don't buy consoles because they're more powerfull than PCs, or even because they're cheaper. They buy them because in 5 years time they can still goto the shops, buy a game, and it'll work out the box.

And while companies may not be "investing in console wars" (though I'd disagree with you entirely on that one) it's pretty obvious that nearly all the major publishers are focused on consoles first and PC a distant second.

[MaximumZero]

My simulation will be finished and I'll be locked in a room playing it by myself for the rest of eternity.

As long as we get to play it too, I'm okay with that.

[Hiiri]

I'll still be playing Dwarf Fortress.

Oh, hell yes.

Keep in mind, DF might be graphically outdated by then.

[Nilik]

Dwarf Fortress v1 will be finished, and we will all live inside of it.

[Muz]

PC games will always be around. Everyone needs a PC. Consoles are for richer, more dedicated gamers.

They'll either go more casual (for people who have a PC for work but want to play something on it) or more hardcore unless someone makes a keyboard or sophisticated control system for a console. But it's a chicken and egg problem making sophisticated console games, because people who love strategy games and the like won't really want to buy a console, because there's no devices around to play sophisticated console games.

Mobile games will really take off in the next few years, and will likely steal most of the PC casual gamer market. Heck, I'd expect 80% of social and casual games to be on mobile within 10 years, because they're just so easy to develop. As smartphones get cheaper and very mobile, people would rather lie down on a sofa with a phone playing Diner Dash than with a laptop. I've been playing The Sims 3 on mobile, and IMO, it's very impressive, especially as it's real time.

MUDs will still remain a PC thing and so will games like DF which do need a lot more power than a mobile and more control than a console.

I'd expect the console market to shrink because of this, or work towards being more specialized, like with Kinect and Guitar Hero. But pretty soon someone (like Microsoft) will develop and sell a Kinect for PC, so consoles will lose that advantage as well.