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"WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD????"

What does the future hold?? This is a question that has been on my mind for some time. Usually it just passes through like it is just another thought that you don’t give the time or day, but with all the free time I have got on my hands at the moment I have got to thinking.

If you think about it, our generation have had it easy; we get to play computer games regularly, go out and have fun with out a worry in the world but “what does the future hold??” in our lives. Me myself believe that it can’t be all that good; our country is still being controlled by labour and war is always a possibility that is waiting around the corner (nooooooo, not war, ahhhhh).

This is not what I what I want to talk about, even though it is a serious matter, that shouldn’t be taken lightly. I want to talk about gaming and the future that it can expect. I know that this has been talked about many times and it is starting to get slightly tedious, but times have changed and I am thinking is it really going to be all that good??

The first issue that I’m going to talk about is consoles. With the PS2 release done and dusted, Sony has already got deep into work on the PS3; will this really be a great improvement to the PS2?? Do we really need these improvements though; I was happy play on my nes and snes, the N64 and psx are good enough for me but obviously not for the companies, and all they are thinking about now is improvements, on their already good consoles.

In a years time, as you all know the Game Cube will be released to the British public, with great graphics, 3rd party support, and now disks. A lot of people are relieved that Nintendo have move to disks, because they can now have larger and better games, Will this get Nintendo’s sales up??? I don’t know.

We have already seen the demise of the great company Sega. Their downfall started with the Sega Saturn, Sega introduced disks, but they just did not work, the Saturn’s disks was to hard to program so it flopped. Will the same happen with Nintendo?? Well it could do, this is a first for Nintendo, and it is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Back to Sega, and their newest console the Dreamcast, this is a great console, and worthy of having the name Sega on it, but it has not done well at all, it has done so bad that Sega have stopped production. What was wrong with this console though, it had great games and brilliant specs, but Sega’s reputation fell because of the Saturn and it could not get back on its feet.

I don’t actually want to talk about consoles; I want to talk about games and their future. When games were first played they were new and original, no one never knew what to expect, so they kept us happy, but as time progressed games have started to repeat themselves and are starting to get a bit tedious. I am not saying all games are bad, because they are not (conkers bad fur day, oh what fun :D) because some do keep us entertained. But they do not have the originality as when games were first released, ideas are just running short.

This brings me to the topic of sequels; a lot of games released now are sequels as you all know. At least 50% of the games on the PS2 at the moment are sequels (Shhhhh turbo, keep quiet, no lists please of “original games”) Being a sequel doesn’t make a game a bad thing, because they can keep us entertained, but they do lack that originality that everyone wants. So as time progresses games are getting worse, but can they get better?? This is a question you must answer yourself, but hopefully they will.

This is all I got to sat at the moment

Thanx

><{{{*>

Dirty, you shouldn't be talking about things like that.

They already do games like that.

I saw a game in Virgin the other day, you had to make some women strip, or something like that.

I hope that in the future we will be produced with games with a sexual nature. ;-)

Wow, I didn't realise it was that long. Sorry everyone who doesn't like reading long posts. :-)

A difficult question you have there, what does the future hold for us? No one knows what we can expect because we will have to wait for the next batch of technology to be designed so we can have “better” games. What do I mean by better though? Do I mean better graphics? No, we already have enough of them. Do I mean better sound? No, the sound is okay, most of the time. Okay it could be a little, tiny bit better, but that’s not the main thing when I mean “better. What could it be then? To be honest, I am not 100% sure myself and that is a bad thing. Maybe I want it to be gameplay, but then developers will spend more time on gameplay, and therefor we will be given poor graphics.

I know that a lot you think graphics are not important in games, but I would have to disagree. The amounts of realism in today’s games are amazing, and you know why that is? It’s because the graphics are just so real, and you feel as though you are actually the character you are playing and you are actually in a different world.
I hope the future doesn’t change this because that’s one of the things I enjoy about gaming, I like the fact that I can be taken out of this dull world and to be taken into a wonderful, exciting adventure. Okay it doesn’t really happen, but I can imagine it, can’t I?

Graphics and game-play go as well together like toothpaste on a brush

As we all know, today consoles have very good technology, therefor the graphics that we are being produced with have been of a very high standard. I will tell you now that I have nothing against games that hold good graphics. I love games with good graphics because they really do create a great atmosphere in a game, but have we been spoilt? I say we have been, and it has rubbed off on the way we think about games. I always find that when the first time you play a game around your mate’s house, the first thing you look for is how good the graphics are. It’s true, but why do we do this? I think it is because we seem to think that if games don’t have good graphics then surely it must be a bad game. Everyone has different opinions on this, but I am going to approach this in a different way. If I see a game that has bad graphics my first thought of the game is that it’s not going to be very good. I don’t think this because I think that game-play is not important, just that there is a lack of games that show of game-play more than graphics. See what I mean? Take any game that has been a real hit this year, and the chances are that the graphics are very good. With the exception of Paper Mario, maybe. I am not sure weather game companies want us thinking the graphics are important or not, and I know that *I* will never know the real answer. Being the person I am, I am going to say that companies want us to think graphics are the most important thing in games. Why do I think this? Well, to me it is the easy way out. Think about it, with today’s technology I wouldn’t be surprised if making good graphics is a piece of cake to professional game companies. I think that they can make good graphics quicker than make a good story line for example.

When someone says the word “graphics” to you what is the first thing that comes into your head? With me it is realistic characters, and I think that this is another serious issue with graphics. Personally, I have always favoured Nintendo over Sony in terms of graphics. I don’t know what makes me think this, but I think it has got to be the fact that Sony try their best to make graphics look realistic, where Nintendo don’t. Nintendo are famous for their cute and cuddly characters, and I think they should be proud of this. It is very hard to create a character that doesn’t look real, but at the same time have good graphics.

The PlayStation2 has some beautiful looking games, but some PS2 owners are still not fully satisfied. I wouldn’t call myself a hard-core gamer or anything, but I do love my games and when I see a lack of game play being put in I feel quite disappointed. There is a reason why some people love having games that have wonderful graphics. Take everyone who has a PS2. They have just dipped into their wallet and dragged out £300 and they are obviously expecting the console to produce them with good games. The owner will be happy with good graphics because they feel they have been given their moneys worth.

So I don’t really know what gaming is going to be like in the future, but if we look at it in a different way we may understand what it is going to be like. I know this may sound weird but by looking in the past and present we may have some idea of the future. Obviously when new things come out they are designed to be better in some way or another. Take games for example. Developers are going to see that at present graphics have come to a stage where they can no longer get better. They are going to be thinking to themselves “how can we make this game better than the rest”. Here is where the future comes into play. They are going to think that they don’t need to improve the games graphics (because the technology isn’t good enough yet) so they are going to focus on something else. I hope this will be a range of new things. I would like to see better lip synthesising. What I mean is when a character speaks try and have the voice go at the same time. It looks shabby when the lip and voice are not correctly timed.

Maybe the simple conclusion if we want better games is to just be more patient. We all know that the best of games takes ages to make. I understand that people will get very bored waiting, and waiting for games to come up so yes you need to release games that maybe aren’t as great as they could be. That’s just tough luck though, as companies seem to think that the quicker titles come out the better. So, what we have here is a very awkward situation. Do we want very few games, but the few are quality or loads of games of a low quality? That’s a hard question and I think the best answer to that is to just balance them out. So you would have the quality games that take a long while to make, and games that are quickly made.

This is where the problems start because we don’t really want games that seem really rushed, neither do we want them to be easy to complete. If companies want to keep us happy and content they need to release very few crapy games. I don’t mind games that are just “okay” as long as they have a long lifespan and reasonably good gameplay.

This is where the next problem comes in. People are often put of with the N64 for not having enough variety of games. Have these people actually booked a night in with Zelda though? Have they spent hours of fun playing Mario64? No, the chances are they haven’t. Either way Nintendo are still loosing money. Deep down they know that if they spend a long time making a game, the fewer games they are going to have on show. So, what can we expect with the Gamecube then? Let’s just hope that Nintendo don’t think they need to rush titles because we don’t want rushed titles on our consoles.

So I predict that we are going to be treated with better technology in our games, and hopefully developers will spend more time concentrating on game-play. Some people may be happy, some people may be sad when I say that graphics will not be getting that much better in games, but that is just reality.

Anyway, whatever the future gaming holds for all of us I am sure that it will be great. To sum it off nicely I am going to say that I am got anticipating the future too much because I think today’s games are brilliant, and I think we should be content with what we have in this stage of gaming.

Fish-e wrote:
> "go out and have fun with out a worry in the world"

You must be joking?!

what does Pandachan mean Dan????

Pandachan = good post !

Nice post now read mine.

I know, I did didn't I

I would actually write something serious in here but you've said it all!