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"The future of gaming revealed"

We all know that some things in the games industry will never change. Nintendo will never release anything other than cutesy, childish but oddly hard titles, SONY will milk every last release for another drop of cash, and projected release dates will always slip by a good few months. However, by my estimation, the games industry could go either way. Obviously graphics will improve to the point where they look photo realistic (code veronica and shenmue acheive this to some degree) and this will be on the latest generation of console that we're using now, or will be come october 26nd. Remember the first games on the playstation? oh how we marvelled at ridge racers 3d graphics, and at tekkens actual models of characters. compare these to games like gran turismo 2, ffviii and metal gear solid though, and you'll see what I mean by evolution. Using this to judge console game evolution on a single console, imagine what the final dreamcast games will like? staggering, in a word. However, the games industry has two paths it can go down. firstly, every available genre will evolve to the point where its unrecogniseable and blurs genres (super magnetic zombie first person tactical espionage fighting....hehe) or, developers will realise the key to the future lies in originality. Games like crazy taxi, chu chu rocket and so on are innovative and interesting... even if you don't like the game. The industry needs fresh games and genres like this to combat sonys endless onslaught of sequels and cheap rip offs. The playstation 2 will likely rule all, hell, I might even get one... but we shouldn't write off the dreamcast yet, just as we shouldn't get too excited about the playstation 2, dolphin or x box. what will happen happens..... but one things for sure, it's going to make for interesting viewing.

del the dream

From what they let you see of Civ3 it looks pretty amazing, its a shame Brian Reynolds didnt last until the end... still I think it'll probably end up a corker! :)

So what about Civ 3? From what I can see, Sid isn't going to mess it up. He has a website about it now, the gifs of the units look great!

I love Civ.

I know what your saying... and agree totally, when I first installed Civ I thought I had complety wasted my cash on crap, but after playing a few games I became a walking ad for the game... I knew a guy who used to work for RAM electronics, did the same thing for SpyHunter, also despite 2 shoddy sequals, people are still desperate for an Elite sequal... you just cant buy this sort of thing with great graphics... but as far as the future of games goes... grphics are going tobe on the top of the list...

You're right... there reallymust be somthing else to talk about... and judging by the time, also lunchtime pubs to visit! :)

You missed my point though, if you give a kid a present, it's going to wrapped up yeah? Yes it will look nice, and will supply limited enjoyment, but it's what's under the wrapping that counts... so I was agreeing with you, not disagreeing...

Anyway, surely there is something else to talk about, we've gone over this too much.

Gameplay is THE important factor, and smoetimes a game can sell on this (Civ, X-Com), and sometimes it cant (Thief), but, in the console market especially, Graphics are going to be the major selling point for 'casual' gamers who make up most of the market capital... although software houses may on the whole be trying to create great games, comanies like Sony, Nintendo, MS, etc... and distributors like EA, Inforgames are only interested in the cash (as business often are)...

Yeah, someone may look at the pretty pictures, but surely that's what they are there for? Graphics are the wrapping of the gameplay.

Is'nt the games industry always like this? ... I remember I had just swapped my Speccy for a C64 in '87 and I read an article about the New ST & Amigas in ACE magazine, and wondering how someone could ever write a game that would use 512k of memory...

Graphics will always improve, because people love great graphics, if your an average punter in Electronics Boutique looking at the back of your PS boxes trying to decide what game to buy...

There'll always be new game genres popping up ever few years... remember when Populous came out and nobody knoew where to put it, the only problem currently is that RTS and FPS & Tomb Raider clones games are easiy to make and shove out and people are still buying them... When Doom/Caslte Wolfenstein was released people thought it ment the rise of the shareware games, but turned out to be the rise of FPS instead...

Most innovative games pass the majority of buyers by because they dont want to risk spending there 30 quid on a game they may not like when they get it home (whatever did happen to play beofre paying)...

The PS and N64 as with the SNES will probably have there best games comming out soon, with a few innovative titles that software distributers are willing to take a chance on as they try and get as much cash from the machines before everybody has moved on to the next gen machines...

del the dream wrote:
> We all know that some things in the games industry will never
> change. Nintendo will never release anything other than cutesy,
> childish but oddly hard titles


There not quite as childish as you might think now matter how cutesy they are...

Fully playable FMV.

That's as far as I can realistically predict. Within 10 years too. I'm putting money on it with William Hill bookies, as soon a we can work out between us what it actually means.

Could have done with some paragraphs though!

I remember playing on my Sega Master System, and thinking that those graphics were awesome, and that they'd never be beaten.

Then I saw the first pictures of Altered Beast for the Megadrive.

Truely jawdropping.

Not by todays standards obviously, but it makes me think that we can never really know how good these next generation games will look until we see them(?)



meka_dragon PQMS8/00