The Predominate Gaming Platform A Decade From Today

[Kirito-kun]

Predicting the future of gaming is difficult, but there's no reason not to try. What you think will be the predominate gaming platform a decade from today?

 

[ShadowSoldier]

Definitely not cloud based gaming. That's a looooong ways away.

 

[Deleted User]

When people start realizing the benefits of steam, the next generation will be on PC over console. It mainly roots down to "I buy what my friend plays". But consoles will still exist, but they all will be cloud based (Steam Clone) and struggling to compete against the PC.

That's my theory.

 

[Gahars]

I'm going for the dark horse candidate here, "sticks and stones."

Nuclear apocalypse or bust!

 

[Hells Malice]

PC.
Too versatile and accessible not to be.

Though i'm sure consoles will stay strong if they stop trying to be everything with gaming in the back seat.

I know polls always have joke options, but they sort of skew results. Mobile gaming dominant...lol.

My Brain

That sounds mildly difficult considering you don't seem to have one

 

[DinohScene]

Cloud based gaming is a neat concept.
If you have a fast and steady connection.
Not un like mine which has massive spikes ranging from as high as 2 MB to as little as 25 kb/s
And 90 of the time it hovers around 50-100 ish kb/s.
Disconnects are also pretty common ._.

For me, consoles deffo.
I just love a controller in me hands and play it on the bigscreen.

Reality, PC's
Like Malice said, to versatile and accessible not to be.

 

[McHaggis]

I think PC I'd unlikely. Sales are declining thanks to the tablet boom and they'll never appeal to the casual market. I think TVs themselves are a more likely platform in the future. They just need someone to unify the Smart TV platform and it should take off from there.

 

[Taleweaver]

I'm going with mobile devices. Whereas the progress of PC's average power (and probably related: their sales) is dwindling, smartphones and (especially) tablets are catching up fast.


The trend is also coming from the 'big three': they're experimenting with how you can combine television play with on the go. My guess is that either them or someone else will bring out a decent thing that unites the two. A wiiu gamepad that can function outside the range of the television but that can be connected to it...that sort of thing.


Cloud based...I think technology-wise, it'll be okay (it's already okay in some regions, and that's only going to grow). But I don't think it'll be profitable because the model pretty much requires you to rent the games...and people want to own a game. So in that concern, the factor "will it predominate gaming" comes down to "what kind of game will be popular in ten years?". It's realistic shooters nowadays, but if the majority shifts to MMORPGS (or other MMO's; preferably turn-based ones)...then that will win.


Hells Malice: I got my girlfriend so much hooked on Mario and Kirby she bought a wii for it. I wasn't able to repeat that with the wiiu. But she DID purchase an iPad pretty much exclusively to play Plants vs Zombies, a candy-themed Bejeweled clone and some sort of sim city-esque game. So before you lol at the idea, think about what makes a gaming platform dominant. Consoles will still be around. PC's as well. But it could very well be that those are a select few...kind of like people who buy MP3-players today (why should you buy one when you have a smartphone?).
I mean...I was looking to buy a PC two days ago. I don't visit electronics stores that often anymore, so the difference struck me: the smartphone and tablet department was enlarged (kind of obvious)...at the expense of room for actual PC's and games (really: the accessories-department was way larger...printers, scanners, headphones, SD cards, you name it...and just a handful of actual prebuilt PC's).

 

[FAST6191]

Software/framework driven meta platform.

 

[Arras]

I went with Other. I don't know what, but I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now there's something else entirely that got popular. Maybe some sort of VR-like thing? A lot can happen in 10 years.

 

[Niksy]

PC master race!

 

[Clydefrosch]

there wont be one, but just as now, there will be all of them and none will exactly stomp the ground with the other. there will still be people saying that a 99cent game with a 20 minute play value is all people want and noone will buy 50$ games anymore, or that nintendo should sell games on mobile crap.
it will be just as it is today.

 

[Satangel]

Mobile platform, definitely.
Although consoles/PC won't be dead of course, there just are some games you can only enjoy on them. But if you purely look at the numbers, mobile gaming will be HUGE.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Mobile platform, definitely.
Although consoles/PC won't be dead of course, there just are some games you can only enjoy on them. But if you purely look at the numbers, mobile gaming will be HUGE.

That's a really poor argument, cuz if you actually looked at the numbers, PC gaming should be ENORMOUS compared to mobile.

Anyways, no matter how small tech gets I think there will always be a market for a big beefy home platform and a portable counterpart when it comes to gaming, whether it's a PC and a phone or a console and a handheld. I'm sure eventually they'll sort of collide with one another at some point, a home platform that can act as a mobile one, but that's still a ways away.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

The Playstation Vita master race.

 

[Satangel]

That's a really poor argument, cuz if you actually looked at the numbers, PC gaming should be ENORMOUS compared to mobile.

Anyways, no matter how small tech gets I think there will always be a market for a big beefy home platform and a portable counterpart when it comes to gaming, whether it's a PC and a phone or a console and a handheld. I'm sure eventually they'll sort of collide with one another at some point, a home platform that can act as a mobile one, but that's still a ways away.

I really doubt there are more people playing on PC than on mobile devices, even today. Mobile devices is just so big, ranging from real gaming handhelds to mobile phones to eReaders to tablets. Sure, incredibly small and casual titles, but I'm sure there are more people who played on a mobile device today, than on PC.

 

[GameWinner]

Tough one.
Maybe PC but consoles will still being popular. At least outside of Japan.

 

[FAST6191]

To go a bit further does nobody else expect all software with largely irrelevant hardware?

I mean today we have android which is basically java, games like minecraft (not noted for low quality graphics) written in Java, the unreal engine is fairly abstract these days, Microsoft did XNA/.net which is pretty portable when it wants to be, quite a few things written in Python, I have pulled apart a fair few things written in Lua (and this goes right down to the handhelds) and the list only goes from there. Add into that the fact we are not necessarily teaching old school programming to everybody and having it become more of a utility/base skill instead.

Streaming (be it own PC and out into the world or some service somewhere) is possibly a stretch for me but I can see having hardware govern things be a distant second or much like arguing about what codec a film is encoded in, what car vehicle someone is operating when there is a race on or possibly what language a story was written in -- sure there will be perks for those that know all that but the actual focus will have shifted.

 

[Veho]

To go a bit further does nobody else expect all software with largely irrelevant hardware?

It does seem the likely course. Today we have operating systems as a standardized platform over a vast array of different hardware, and in the future I imagine game engines (or gaming frameworks, game virtual machines, I dunno) will be yet another layer of virtualization "smoothing over" the differences in hardware. Game engines or game services will have certain minimum hardware requirements, and devices will have little stickers saying "Steam certified" or "Unreal Ready" or something. Game engines will be more scalable to take advantage of stronger hardware while still supporting the minimum requirement machines, but 99% of the game code will be the same for all machines.

The only great divide remaining will be between home machines and portable devices, for obvious reasons, but a lot of games will be ported to both platforms, and they will let you transfer saves to your other device and pick up where you left off.

Of course, predicting the future is a mug's game and you really shouldn't hold me on anything I said.