59 replies to this topic

[Time_Traveller]

This is a video for the PS9 in 2078, Wish i had that now, What do members think?

[Shinjeez]

PS1 = 1994
PS2 = 2000
PS3 = 2006
PS4 = estimated 2014

2014 - 2006 = 8 years

Even if we follow the rate of 1 new PS every 8 years instead of every 6 years like in the past, we should get PS9 in 2054; PS12 would come out in the year of the video, 2078.

I think that full senses immersion virtual reality will be awesome; i just hope they won't allow pain to be felt

[Caiman]

I think we'll have full sense, immersive virtual reality long before 2078, if the exponential growth of computer power and technology in the last fifty years gives us any indications of what to expect in the next fifty... the whole concept of 'gaming' will change entirely in that kind of environment, without a doubt. I suppose, we're already starting to see the beginnings of usable 'augmented reality', and with mainstream consoles introducing devices such as the 'Kinect' allowing controller free, full body control over a computer the next few generations themselves could turn out to be quite out there in terms of what we're used to.

[ExplorerAtHeart]

What about the games themselves? Will we see new types of games? I hope there continues to be excellent games like Portal 2.

[wjfox]

I think games will become increasingly non-linear. You'll have storylines that adapt and evolve as you're playing them, and which don't have a "fixed" ending. Heavy Rain (PS3) is a good example of this - it has dozens of possible endings. Ultimately, software will become so advanced, and with such in-depth AI interactions, there will be seemingly infinite forks and pathways in the storyline.

Graphics will be pretty much indistinguishable from real life by the early 2020s, and we'll have intense VR experiences later in that decade.

As for truly immersive VR, where you're literally placed "inside" the game, I can see that happening before 2050, and probably before 2040 if the current rate of progress continues.

[Nom du Clavier]

What about the games themselves? Will we see new types of games? I hope there continues to be excellent games like Portal 2.

We do what we must because we can... for the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead.

If an AI like GlaDOS ran the NPC's in a game in 2050, I'd probably be torn between being very impressed and deciding whether or not to listen to my fight/flight response... I'd possibly also get a sudden craving for cake.

[CamGoldenGun]

Even if we follow the rate of 1 new PS every 8 years instead of every 6 years like in the past, we should get PS9 in 2054; PS12 would come out in the year of the video, 2078.

I think that full senses immersion virtual reality will be awesome; i just hope they won't allow pain to be felt

But you're forgetting about World War III and with all the nuclear devastation and EMPs getting shot around the world, we'll have to re-develop which would take about 20 years to get from a 1940's era to a 2054 era right? lol

I think games will become increasingly non-linear. You'll have storylines that adapt and evolve as you're playing them, and which don't have a "fixed" ending. Heavy Rain (PS3) is a good example of this - it has dozens of possible endings. Ultimately, software will become so advanced, and with such in-depth AI interactions, there will be seemingly infinite forks and pathways in the storyline.

Graphics will be pretty much indistinguishable from real life by the early 2020s, and we'll have intense VR experiences later in that decade.

As for truly immersive VR, where you're literally placed "inside" the game, I can see that happening before 2050, and probably before 2040 if the current rate of progress continues.

I hope so. Heavy Rain was a good story but I feel a lot of the game developers are taking the same route as Hollywood with the gimmicks and franchises. It will take some innovation from an outside party to influence the rest. So while I predict we'll see a Halo game where you are Master Chief, etc., the technology to enable the developers to do that will be brought in from elsewhere.

As soon as we start programing games with AI that can really take on its own flavour to the individual players' style is really going to kill FAQ's and walkthroughs lol. It'll be fun though

[Saradus]

I think games will become increasingly non-linear. You'll have storylines that adapt and evolve as you're playing them, and which don't have a "fixed" ending. Heavy Rain (PS3) is a good example of this - it has dozens of possible endings. Ultimately, software will become so advanced, and with such in-depth AI interactions, there will be seemingly infinite forks and pathways in the storyline.

Graphics will be pretty much indistinguishable from real life by the early 2020s, and we'll have intense VR experiences later in that decade.

As for truly immersive VR, where you're literally placed "inside" the game, I can see that happening before 2050, and probably before 2040 if the current rate of progress continues.

I agree, if we are going to see continued innovation in games, then deviating from linearity is going to be a key part. There's only so much originality and innovation the industry can come out with. Once we get AI to the point where the game takes a path completely dependent on the player's actions, that's when things will get really interesting.

The ultimate goal is of course the aforementioned full-immersion VR. I can't wait for that day, the prospects will be endless! Especially if AI and graphics are equally lifelike. Not only could this technology be used for games, but you could meet with family and friends across the globe, travel all over the world for free, experience things impossible in the real world like flying and walking without a spacesuit on a distant planet. Also the porn industry would take an interesting turn for all those lonely hearts out there! Not to mention that education would become a truly exciting and engaging experience. Join your classmates from the comfort of your living room and during your history lesson, your teacher transports you all to the middle of the battle of hastings. Or for a science lesson all the students are flung into space and travel the galaxy. Learning would be so much fun!

[Nick1984]

Tiger Woods 14/Virtua Tennis 5 (2015) - Having now fully worked out how to use the PlayStation Move, developers can now make games that fully simulate ball sports, these are now the main tool used to practise sports and is starting to be taken seriously by professionals.

FIFA 21 (2020) - Full player body movement is controlled by the Kinect 2, every kick is perfectly recreated online with realistic ball physics.

Starcraft 4 (2030) - All tactics and controls are done using a brain sensor which eliminates the RSI which has lead to Korean professionals retiring in their early 20s. Following success in Korea (due to fast net connections) Startcraft has joined the Olympics, FIFA World Cup and SuperBowl as one of the biggest spectator sports.

Final Fantasy XX (2035) - Following the singularity, all NPCs (non playable characters) in the game are now super intelligent. Starting off with knowledge programmed into the game, these characters learn from the player to personalise each player's experience. Due to semantics, characters are also able to hold lengthy conversations with the player regarding the game world, or be able to learn about the real world

Second Life: Earth (2040) - Building from Second Life, Micazook Project X and Google Earth, players can now move around a 100% accurate version of virtual Earth right down to detail visible to the human eye thanks to advances in computer graphics. This was built with the help of augmented reality phones where images taken could be tagged with geolocational and orientation properties. Unlike the real world, this virtual world has now laws.

[Mentat]

Interesting! I'm skeptical about the popularity of motion-controlled gaming. I think it's just a fad, but it may exist in one form or another for casual gamers.

I'm more inclined to believe your later predictions about neural or optical interfaces. Video gaming is all about immersion. One of the biggest obstacles in achieving immersion has always been the controller. Just look at the Xbox 360 controller with 2 triggers, 2 bumper buttons, 4 action buttons, 2 joysticks (which double as buttons when pressed down), an analog pad, a back button and a start button.

When you stop and think about it, it's pretty amazing our brains can use it at all. Our brains send signals to our fingers to push a button or move the joystick. But if there were a technology that could bypass the controller and convert those brain signals directly into commands...then I think we might be on to something.

[Shimmy]

I think the idea of sports games becoming more and more like the real sports will only go to a certain extent. One of the main concepts of sports games is that ordinary people can do stuff they don't have the skill to do in real life. If you make a sport game 100% accurate in terms of body movements you've ruined the whole purpose and essentially made sports games just as physically demanding as the sports they're based on.

[ExplorerAtHeart]

Plus in sports games you control the whole team and the strategy needed to win.

[Caiman]

Essentially, video game interfaces haven't changed much in the last thirty years. We're still either sat in front of the TV holding a control pad connected to a gaming console which has games on physical media inserted into them, or we're using mouse/keyboard/joystick on a desktop/laptop computer. Sure, the technology has become much more powerful and the ergonomics of controls has evolved and become more precise but fundamentally, only now are we really starting to see a realistic shift into new territory, initiated by the Wii control system, evolved by the Kinect. I think they're more than gimmicks, in the long run, and are indeed important test beds for what is yet to come. They may well become dead ends long before the thirty years regular control systems have had, but I think they're important gateways into introducing entirely different concepts for computer control into every day society.

[Nick1984]

Plus in sports games you control the whole team and the strategy needed to win.

What about when you're playing FIFA online with 21 other people, each of you controlling just one player?

You could use something like the Wii 'nunchuck' to move your player around the pitch, and 'Kinect 2' to control body movement for kicking and heading?

[CamGoldenGun]

I just can't wait for an awesome martial arts game be it Boxing, Shaolin, etc. It will have to be a lot more tuned than Wii Sports boxing but you could get a good workout. Even a 1st person Mortal Kombat game would be awesome.

[Nick1984]

Fight Night on Kinect would be amazing, obviously there'd be a few problems like what happens when you're hit, but there's no doubt Kinectcould perfectly replicate your movements and punches perfectly.

[Chronomaster]

I think they're important gateways into introducing entirely different concepts for computer control into every day society.

I think this is it, really- navigating around menus on Kinect is really cool, sure the 'novelty' of it wears quickly, but beyond that it still remains a viable control system- and the voice and facial expression recognition technology is great too. We'll probably always have some kind of tactile input device available, but I really do believe that by 2020, sensor based/voice activated computing will be everywhere.

[Trezoristo]

Even if we follow the rate of 1 new PS every 8 years instead of every 6 years like in the past, we should get PS9 in 2054; PS12 would come out in the year of the video, 2078.

I really wonder whether we will still have dedicated game consoles then, or even in a decade. I believe that goal-specific devices like that will either be replaced by multi-purpose devices like phones and notebooks and/or made obsolete by cloud computing.

To elaborate on the first; the games in different app-stores are already wildly popular and even though we might not consider them 'real games', their market share is increasing. Also, on the matter of those 'real' games, it seems that when it comes to graphics, today's releases are trailing what might be possible with the newest hardware by quite a margin, I believe more so then a few years ago. Fancy graphics have, as far as I can, lost importance in the development process to other features (which is probably a good thing). That said, supposing that computers of all sizes will keep following Moore's law, and that I'm right and system requirements take a back seat, platforms that are currently not considered fit for playing 'real' games, like notebooks, might become so in the near future.

To elaborate on the second factor that might kill dedicated game consoles, cloud computing, I'd like to point out that the first game-streaming services are launching today. If my previous prediction that the graphical quality of games will not rise nearly as fast as it can hardware-wise turns out to be incorrect, buying a machine that makes the newest games look the best they can, be it a console of a computer, will remain an expensive affair as it is today. There is a lot to say for letting the game itself run on some server, offering everyone with a nice monitor and an internet connection the option to play all the latest games with the highest settings. Not having to deal with different hardware configurations or, in the case of consoles, strict limits to resource usage would arguably make life easier for developers as well.

I think we'll have full sense, immersive virtual reality long before 2078, if the exponential growth of computer power and technology in the last fifty years gives us any indications of what to expect in the next fifty... the whole concept of 'gaming' will change entirely in that kind of environment, without a doubt. I suppose, we're already starting to see the beginnings of usable 'augmented reality', and with mainstream consoles introducing devices such as the 'Kinect' allowing controller free, full body control over a computer the next few generations themselves could turn out to be quite out there in terms of what we're used to.

Hell, I'm already looking forward to the death of the remote, being able to pause a movie or change the volume with some simple gestures. That said, Kinect seems useful only for a certain category of games, that is to said not the ones you play on portable devices (like I said, an increasing share), because that would just look weird in public .

I think games will become increasingly non-linear. You'll have storylines that adapt and evolve as you're playing them, and which don't have a "fixed" ending. Heavy Rain (PS3) is a good example of this - it has dozens of possible endings. Ultimately, software will become so advanced, and with such in-depth AI interactions, there will be seemingly infinite forks and pathways in the storyline.

I haven't played Heavy Rain, but I do believe that good story telling will require human attention for some time, at least until artificial game-designing intelligences have mastered the fine arts . As support for that statement I point to Portal 2, already considered one of the best games of this year, partially because of it's story, and still very, very linear. I'm not saying all good games will be like this, I think Minecraft is brilliant non-linear game, but not because of its story. I'm just saying that I don't see linear games going away any time soon, because good writing can't be dumped on technology, and writing a lot of parallel storylines will mean players will only experience a small part of your game, which is expensive.

I agree, if we are going to see continued innovation in games, then deviating from linearity is going to be a key part. There's only so much originality and innovation the industry can come out with.

The human race has been writing linear stories for millennia now, I think we can carry on coming up with new ones for a little bit longer yet .

Once we get AI to the point where the game takes a path completely dependent on the player's actions, that's when things will get really interesting.

I'm not convinced, I believe (massive) multiplayer games are most suited for experiencing authentic personal adventures. Eve online has arguably pushed this further than any other game has managed so far. Artificial intelligence will have trouble doing better than that.

[Chronomaster]

I wonder if any of the MMORPGs which are around now have the longevity to last decades and evolve with the technology that lies ahead of us, games like World of Warcraft, or EVE Online- might we one day be stepping into these virtual worlds as fully immersive experiences, or would we be seeking different kinds of experiences with that kind of technology?

[psychonaut25]

Prediction of 2020 game consoles