As I previewed on Friday this week is a theme week, we’ll be discussing the future of games for the whole week. Why you ask? Well it’s mostly because it’s a pretty interesting topic, but it’s also because I’m away from home this week and may well take it easy some days – or actually spend some time with the PS3 that sits in in my current location (no, it’s not mine). Don’t worry they’ll still be a topic ever day. Anyway with that out of the way lets get onto today’s topic – the future of the current gen.
The end of the last generation of consoles saw something completely spectacular, God of War II. Released for what was now Sony’s last generation of console (although only just) it easily surpassed anything that was available on either the PS3 or the Xbox 360 at the time in pretty much every area. With that pretty much unprecedented release I think a lot of people’s opinion on what any given console was capable of changed quite drastically. Until then it had been relatively easy for companies’ to sell the idea of a new generation as being the be all and end all, “You must have the new generation, and if you don’t have the new generation you’re a looser, you don’t want to be a looser do you? Great, that’ll cost you this month’s rent!”
Maybe the late in the game power of the PS2 that God of War II showed off has helped to change consumer perception, because no-one really seems to be clamouring for the next generation this time round. Sure the Xbox 360 is only about four and a half years old now, but that’s already more than the original Xbox’s life span and it doesn’t seem that Microsoft have any plans to move on any time soon. Sony are a little earlier in the game, releasing almost a year after Microsoft, but you’d expect to hear something vague out of them by now.
So what does the future hold for this generation? Looking at what we know, motion control is obviously going to play a very significant part in the future. The Move and Natal both have a good chance of not just upping the graphical power or story telling ability as happens with most hardware releases, but of actually changing the way we play games and interact with content on our screens.
Beyond that I have genuinely high hopes for OnLive. Whilst we’ve heard next to nothing on how the service actually performs yet, a lot will certainly come out in June when the service comes out of beta and launches in America.
I’ll admit that I am a little disappointed with OnLive’s announced business model, you pay a subscription fee and then pay to buy and rent games on top of that. Personally I’d rather it was more like LoveFilm, pay the subscription cost and you’re done. Of course that’s probably because as I see OnLive as a competitor to rental services more than anything, I still want to go out and buy games, but paying a subscription fee to have instant access to try any game I want would be a killer service.
So what do you see in the future of this generation? Will OnLive succeed? How will Move and Natal change things? Just how much power and fidelity can developers squeeze out of the current hardware? What about optical media, will Microsoft be forced to do something about the DVD-9 limitation or will their gamble on downloadable games pay off?
Thanks to bunimomike for suggesting this topic. If you have your own idea why not suggest it?