The Gaming Future

[Macca65]

I know I am not the oldest gamer on this forum, but I know I am one of the oldest (64). I have seen a lot of changes in the gaming world, and a lot of them for the betterment of the gamer.

With the advent of Google into the arena do people think that the console will drift into obscurity, or will it continue for a few years yet. 

And do people think they will still be gaming into their 60's and beyond as I hope to do

[Zennon]

It is all about the lowest input lag, enough said.

 

[Netduma Alex]

The following is my personal opinion, and nothing to do with what Netduma as a company thinks!

---

I think that the idea of game ownership will become less and less prevalent.

Publishers are currently pushing for all of their games to be "games as a service" which require an online connection even for single player content. They use the existence of lobbies and shared areas as an excuse to design their games this way, primarily because it gives them greater control over the end product even once it's in the player's hands. It also means you can sell players microtransactions, and then you can track those players and try to figure out the best way to take their money.

Servers are often shut down a few years after a game comes out, and in this case your disc becomes a paperweight. Having purchased a game, you should be able to play that game until your console dies at the very least. This idea that instead of buying the right to play a game, we are renting the right to use a company's servers for an unspecified period of time, makes me uncomfortable.

Now with the advent of game streaming, the idea of ownership becomes even hazier. Google will sell us games at full price, only accessible through their servers. What happens if the service shuts down? It's not like Google is a stranger to shutting things down. What happens if you get banned? Do you lose all of your games?

Even now there are old MMORPGs which are lost to time because players do not have the server side code.

I think a best practice would be to open source the server side code when you shut a game down so that dedicated players can still keep it alive, but of course they'd rather you just move onto whatever they're trying to sell you this year. Game archival is a dying hobby.

---

I find myself increasingly alienated by the current state of the industry so I find it hard to imagine that i'll be playing games when i'm 60, but... I probably will anyway, begrudgingly. It's a lifelong hobby for me... I imagine i'll be one of those guys who only plays old games. As they say, the old ones are always the best ones.

[jakecrew]

Maybe its possible

But in my view console community is so huge. It will take years to go obscure.