GC 2008: Two Views of the Gaming Future

I'm an avid PC gamer, but I don't see the PC ever becoming "the" gaming platform for many reasons: Bigger up-front costs, hardware conflicts/support issues, and the complexity of upgrading. Let's face it, PC gaming is a pain in the ass unless you really know what you're doing. If you don't know how to troubleshoot for hardware problems (that are pretty much inevitable) then you're stuck paying out of pocket for tech support (or relying on a techie friend). Which is yet another additional cost. For a platform to become "the" platform, it must be accessible to the mass market--a group that doesn't want to fiddle with hardware. Consoles are going to stick around for a long time to come. They're just going to mimic PCs in some ways (like what has already happened with hard drives and internet access). The only other possibility I see is a reversal of this--gaming PCs starting to mimic consoles in how hardware is handled. That seems far less likely, though.

I think that this guy makes a point. I mean, things are going to have to change sooner or later, and they will, and I think that that's going to be a major fall for the gaming industry, because gamers won't like the change from, buying games at walmart, and digital purchasing. And gamers won't like not having an Xbox, and having to upgrade thier pc's.

I believe stores would still carry consoles even if there we're no boxed games. Really, it's the accessories that pull in the most money anyways. Plus there will always be those kind of people that just want to go and buy from a store rather than download. I think consoles are just fine and aren't going anywhere.

I think we'll start seeing more downloadable games, but I don't think that all games will be downloadable. If that was going to happen, then consoles would need to have much bigger hard drives, in order for people to download multiple games and still have plenty of space left on the hard drive. Otherwise, they'd have a problem on they're hands. After all, you need a hard drive to be able to downoald games, and if you don't have a very big hard drive, then it would be pretty difficult to get more games. I know that you could just delete games, but there could be some people that wouldn't want to delete their games. And if they weren't willing to do that, then that would be a problem. Also, retail still seems to be the preferred way of distributing games. Almost all the games that come out are retail games, we occasionally see retail title released for download as well, but that doesn't happen very often. And reason for that is probably the size of the game. They're probably worried that a game would take too long to download, and they don't want to have people wait a couple of hours to get a game through download, when they could buy the same game at a store and play it instantly. If they could prevent these problems from happening then I could see digital distribution take over. As for consoles dieing, I don't know. It all depends on if people would buy them, and if stores would sell them. It's hard to tell what will happen in 2020, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Day 2 started off for me with back-to-back sessions this morning, covering the future of gaming. The first session, hosted by WildTangent CEO Alex St. John, and dealt with "Gaming in 2020". Crytek's Cevat Yersi hosted the second session, discussing the future of gaming graphics.

St. John's session dealt much more with the business side of the industry, while Yersi was strictly focused on the future of gaming visuals. Still, both had fairly hardline projections for what to expect in the near-future of games, even if sometimes their predictions clashed. As for St. John, his boldest statement had to do with the future of gaming consoles. In a word, he thinks console gaming is on its way out, doomed to go the way of the arcades. He cited a number of examples to support his theory: including his assertion that Sony and Microsoft would never recover the losses they respectively incurred for the research and development of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. St. John also mentioned the "era of production values" is ending, as games featuring excellent graphics become more and more prevalent.

In a sense, it seems Crytek's Yersi agrees. During his lecture, he repeatedly pointed out the fact that thanks to increased graphical capabilities, game developers are creating games that look more and more alike. Yersi predicts that a graphical renaissance will occur at the earliest in 2011 with the next major graphics engines (including the next engine from Crytek); until that time, developers on this console generation will need to focus on things like AI, physics, and by developing an artistic style for their games in order to set themselves apart from the competition.

While Yersi feels certain that new consoles are around the corner from Sony and Microsoft, St. John says that the dominant gaming platform will be the PC and that the faster consoles move into the online space, the quicker they'll die. The logic here is a little twisty but it makes a strange sort of sense: As consoles increase their online presence, and more games become available via download, the need to have those games on store shelves will eventually become minimal. According to St. John, retailers like Wal-Mart receive very little premium on console sales; instead, they make money on the games that line their shelves. If, in 2020, everyone is downloading their games online, why would retailers carry games (and, by extension, the consoles that play them)? If I was a betting man, I'd come down on the side of Yersi for the next console generation. I think Sony and Microsoft will make at least one more go in the console wars--and it's probably a safe bet that both companies are elbow-deep in R&D right now preparing for those console launches. How about you? Do you think we'll all be playing on PCs in the year 2020 or will we be plugging away on our PlayStation 5s and Xbox 1440s?