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From year to year little appears to change. Looking at the games of last year, are they really any different to the games of today? Not really, because the games industry moves more slowly and changes are more gradual. Early Playstation games were good, but over the 5 or 6 years it has been around the quality has improved no end. The Playstation 2 may mean a quick jump up the quality ladder in terms of graphics, but this doesn't mean that the games themselves will be better?
This isn't the place to open up the whole graphics vs. gameplay issue, but just because the Playstation 2 can make better looking games it does not mean that they are actually better games in terms of fun and enjoyment. Too many games have been graphical showcases and lacked any gameplay. Games can keep on looking better but if they don't play any better we will soon get bored. Sometime around Fifa 2011 I think!!
Still, thinking back to the old computers things have moved on a lot. The turning point in my eyes was the release of the 32-bit consoles, especially the Playstation. The 8-bit computers (Commodore 64, Spectrum etc) were very basic, and games were all 2D. The 16-bit consoles while being a lot better still played 2D games. The games were the same as on the 8-bit computers just a bit better, they weren't a massive leap forward. In contrast the release of the 32-bit consoles saw a host of new genres created, for example platform games were no longer flat side scrolling affairs but full 3D adventures. The first person shooter is a very popular genre now bit before the 32 bit consoles it was only possible on the PC.
After seeing the Playstation 2 in action and previews of the upcoming XBox it seems as if these new consoles are not a massive leap forward. They play the same type of games as the Playstation, just they make them look better. So what does this mean for the future of gaming? It all depends on what you consider the word future to mean. Games aren't going to change next week, or even next year, but over the period of a few years things will change. When we played Space Invaders all those years ago who would have thought that we would be playing the games we do today, and in the same way it is difficult to foresee what is going to happen 20 years in to the future. That isn't going to stop me from trying though!!
Here is what I think for...............
The Near Future
There are two fronts to consider over the next year, notably the console situation and the PC.
The PC has a tendency to plod along, with games improving all the time and hardware doing the same. Later this year however, we are going to see a massive leap forward in the PC gaming market. The GeForce 3 by NVidia. It would be very easy to dismiss this as just another graphics card which is better than the last, and while that is true, this card has the potential to make games look infinitely better. I won't bore you with technical jargon right here, but the GeForce has programmable hardware so game designers can work wonders with it. We are talking Toy Story quality rendering in our games.
The big problem with this new card is the cost, at an expected £450 it is far from cheap and out of the range of a lot of people. Interestingly the Xbox uses GeForce 3 technology and has the potential to blow the Playstation 2 out of the water in terms of graphics. However, just having good graphics does not make a good game. If companies continue to churn out the same game just with better graphics then we are soon going to get a little bored.
The immediate future of the console market will be interesting too. People are starting to move to the next generation console and I have to admit that the original Playstation is looking very dated now. With the demise of the Sega Dreamcast Sony currently have the whole field to themselves, giving the Playstation 2 a head start. The Xbox should be out within one year and with Microsoft behind it I fail to see how it can't sell well. Yet again, however, one can't help but feel that Nintendo have missed the boat a little. People need a new console now, or next year at the latest. Their Game Cube (or whatever they call it) could be years, especially when you consider Nintendo's usual delays. I still think the Nintendo next gen console will do well, but in a similar way to the N64. It hasn't got a shot at ruling the roost, that will fall either to Sony or Microsoft.
Looking back at the previous battles you see that no company has ever managed to be top for two successive consoles. Nintendo won with their NES, then Sega with their Mega Drive, then Sony with the Playstation. However, with the Playstation being almost a household name it is always difficult to see people abandoning it. Time will surely tell, but regardless of who wins gaming is going to move on, but the question is how will gaming move on?
Looking at the next few years what changes may occur in gaming? There are a few things which we are starting to see now that should take off in the near future.
Force feedback is a technology that has been around for a long time now but hasn't really become mainstream. Years ago in the arcades Sega Rally cabinets came with a force feedback steering wheel, and then Sony pioneered the technology with their dual analogue controller on the original Playstation. It has the potential to add a lot to the gaming experience. The problem is at present the Playstation 2 controller is still the original dual shock controller, albeit with pressure sensitive buttons. Force feedback has so much more potential, for example in a driving game if skid then force feedback can make it harder for you to steer in one direction, similar to a real car.
Another area which will surely become massive is online gaming. It is already very popular on the PC with games like Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 allowing easy multiplayer battles. These are perfectly playable on a 56K modem although the faster your connection the better. The Dreamcast had the potential for online gaming but this never really took off until the console was already on its death bed. I know a lot of people who bought the console for its internet and online gaming capabilities, but most people were left frustrated by an inability to play most games online.
Online gaming really is much more fun and to for Sony to have released the Playstation 2 without it is criminal. Users will be able to buy modems for their consoles in the future and this will surely be a killer feature in deciding which console wins the next gen war. The potential for online gaming is massive, from a simple game of chess to a full online world in a RPG. I have no doubt at all that in the future online gaming will become more and more popular.
Sound is very important in gaming, and recently 3D surround sound has become popular. This uses a combination of a 4 speaker (or more) set up and special programming in the game to make more realistic sound effects. For example, if someone is walking behind you, you hear their footsteps behind you so you know where they are. Its advantage in first person shooters is obvious. This is a great step forward and one which can only become more popular and widely used in the future.
I would imagine that over the next few years games will not change massively. The full capabilities of the new consoles will be used and games will get better but I doubt there will be an major new genres created. That is not all bad however, as the current genres can be pushed and redefined. Doom may have invented the FPS but Quake 3 is so much better, and Black and White is a massive leap over all before it.
The Distant Future
Of course things will not stay the same forever, eventually there will come a point where gaming changes massively. No one knows how, but that won't stop me from throwing a few ideas around.
So far gaming only stimulates a few of our senses, sight, sound and more recently touch (with force feedback) but I think in the future smell will also be used. Imagine walking around a world an being able to smell your location too. It would open up numerous possibilities for new gaming experiences and would make a game much more engrossing. The technology may not be that far away either, I recently read of a smell printer that let you print out the smell of a pizza before you bought it online!!
Graphics will continue to get better and better but they can only go so far. Once they are the same quality as our eyes can see, then there can be no more improvements. They still have some way to go but once they become photo realistic thereís not really any further to go.
Of course of one the biggest limitations is viewing things on a flat 2D screen. A 3D monitor using some of holographic system could revolutionise gaming, as well as normal TV viewing.
Virtual reality used to be a buzz word, but recently it seems to have died somewhat. I think that when the technology allows for a better virtual reality experience that it could become very popular. The idea is that rather than watching a screen you wear a helmet so you are immersed in the world, taken to its fullest you would be in another world. Your body is wired up to detection motion and you can move around the virtual world. Imagine a first person shooter where you run with the gun, rather than just click a mouse!!
Taking this to the extreme we would have a Star Trek holosuite style situation where you were in a virtual world without the need for a helmet or suit. This is likely to be many, many years in the future, if indeed it is ever possible! Even still, we can dream...........and how good a dream it would be. You could drive an F1 car in a race and it would seem real, fly a fighter plane or re-enact the death star scene from Star Wars, all in the safety of your virtual reality system.
That of course is simply my prediction of the future, what the real outcome will be is anyoneís guess. However games turns out in the future one thing is certain, I'll be playing as many as possible!
This isn't the place to open up the whole graphics vs. gameplay issue, but just because the Playstation 2 can make better looking games it does not mean that they are actually better games in terms of fun and enjoyment. Too many games have been graphical showcases and lacked any gameplay. Games can keep on looking better but if they don't play any better we will soon get bored. Sometime around Fifa 2011 I think!!
Still, thinking back to the old computers things have moved on a lot. The turning point in my eyes was the release of the 32-bit consoles, especially the Playstation. The 8-bit computers (Commodore 64, Spectrum etc) were very basic, and games were all 2D. The 16-bit consoles while being a lot better still played 2D games. The games were the same as on the 8-bit computers just a bit better, they weren't a massive leap forward. In contrast the release of the 32-bit consoles saw a host of new genres created, for example platform games were no longer flat side scrolling affairs but full 3D adventures. The first person shooter is a very popular genre now bit before the 32 bit consoles it was only possible on the PC.
After seeing the Playstation 2 in action and previews of the upcoming XBox it seems as if these new consoles are not a massive leap forward. They play the same type of games as the Playstation, just they make them look better. So what does this mean for the future of gaming? It all depends on what you consider the word future to mean. Games aren't going to change next week, or even next year, but over the period of a few years things will change. When we played Space Invaders all those years ago who would have thought that we would be playing the games we do today, and in the same way it is difficult to foresee what is going to happen 20 years in to the future. That isn't going to stop me from trying though!!
Here is what I think for...............
The Near Future
There are two fronts to consider over the next year, notably the console situation and the PC.
The PC has a tendency to plod along, with games improving all the time and hardware doing the same. Later this year however, we are going to see a massive leap forward in the PC gaming market. The GeForce 3 by NVidia. It would be very easy to dismiss this as just another graphics card which is better than the last, and while that is true, this card has the potential to make games look infinitely better. I won't bore you with technical jargon right here, but the GeForce has programmable hardware so game designers can work wonders with it. We are talking Toy Story quality rendering in our games.
The big problem with this new card is the cost, at an expected £450 it is far from cheap and out of the range of a lot of people. Interestingly the Xbox uses GeForce 3 technology and has the potential to blow the Playstation 2 out of the water in terms of graphics. However, just having good graphics does not make a good game. If companies continue to churn out the same game just with better graphics then we are soon going to get a little bored.
The immediate future of the console market will be interesting too. People are starting to move to the next generation console and I have to admit that the original Playstation is looking very dated now. With the demise of the Sega Dreamcast Sony currently have the whole field to themselves, giving the Playstation 2 a head start. The Xbox should be out within one year and with Microsoft behind it I fail to see how it can't sell well. Yet again, however, one can't help but feel that Nintendo have missed the boat a little. People need a new console now, or next year at the latest. Their Game Cube (or whatever they call it) could be years, especially when you consider Nintendo's usual delays. I still think the Nintendo next gen console will do well, but in a similar way to the N64. It hasn't got a shot at ruling the roost, that will fall either to Sony or Microsoft.
Looking back at the previous battles you see that no company has ever managed to be top for two successive consoles. Nintendo won with their NES, then Sega with their Mega Drive, then Sony with the Playstation. However, with the Playstation being almost a household name it is always difficult to see people abandoning it. Time will surely tell, but regardless of who wins gaming is going to move on, but the question is how will gaming move on?
Looking at the next few years what changes may occur in gaming? There are a few things which we are starting to see now that should take off in the near future.
Force feedback is a technology that has been around for a long time now but hasn't really become mainstream. Years ago in the arcades Sega Rally cabinets came with a force feedback steering wheel, and then Sony pioneered the technology with their dual analogue controller on the original Playstation. It has the potential to add a lot to the gaming experience. The problem is at present the Playstation 2 controller is still the original dual shock controller, albeit with pressure sensitive buttons. Force feedback has so much more potential, for example in a driving game if skid then force feedback can make it harder for you to steer in one direction, similar to a real car.
Another area which will surely become massive is online gaming. It is already very popular on the PC with games like Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 allowing easy multiplayer battles. These are perfectly playable on a 56K modem although the faster your connection the better. The Dreamcast had the potential for online gaming but this never really took off until the console was already on its death bed. I know a lot of people who bought the console for its internet and online gaming capabilities, but most people were left frustrated by an inability to play most games online.
Online gaming really is much more fun and to for Sony to have released the Playstation 2 without it is criminal. Users will be able to buy modems for their consoles in the future and this will surely be a killer feature in deciding which console wins the next gen war. The potential for online gaming is massive, from a simple game of chess to a full online world in a RPG. I have no doubt at all that in the future online gaming will become more and more popular.
Sound is very important in gaming, and recently 3D surround sound has become popular. This uses a combination of a 4 speaker (or more) set up and special programming in the game to make more realistic sound effects. For example, if someone is walking behind you, you hear their footsteps behind you so you know where they are. Its advantage in first person shooters is obvious. This is a great step forward and one which can only become more popular and widely used in the future.
I would imagine that over the next few years games will not change massively. The full capabilities of the new consoles will be used and games will get better but I doubt there will be an major new genres created. That is not all bad however, as the current genres can be pushed and redefined. Doom may have invented the FPS but Quake 3 is so much better, and Black and White is a massive leap over all before it.
The Distant Future
Of course things will not stay the same forever, eventually there will come a point where gaming changes massively. No one knows how, but that won't stop me from throwing a few ideas around.
So far gaming only stimulates a few of our senses, sight, sound and more recently touch (with force feedback) but I think in the future smell will also be used. Imagine walking around a world an being able to smell your location too. It would open up numerous possibilities for new gaming experiences and would make a game much more engrossing. The technology may not be that far away either, I recently read of a smell printer that let you print out the smell of a pizza before you bought it online!!
Graphics will continue to get better and better but they can only go so far. Once they are the same quality as our eyes can see, then there can be no more improvements. They still have some way to go but once they become photo realistic thereís not really any further to go.
Of course of one the biggest limitations is viewing things on a flat 2D screen. A 3D monitor using some of holographic system could revolutionise gaming, as well as normal TV viewing.
Virtual reality used to be a buzz word, but recently it seems to have died somewhat. I think that when the technology allows for a better virtual reality experience that it could become very popular. The idea is that rather than watching a screen you wear a helmet so you are immersed in the world, taken to its fullest you would be in another world. Your body is wired up to detection motion and you can move around the virtual world. Imagine a first person shooter where you run with the gun, rather than just click a mouse!!
Taking this to the extreme we would have a Star Trek holosuite style situation where you were in a virtual world without the need for a helmet or suit. This is likely to be many, many years in the future, if indeed it is ever possible! Even still, we can dream...........and how good a dream it would be. You could drive an F1 car in a race and it would seem real, fly a fighter plane or re-enact the death star scene from Star Wars, all in the safety of your virtual reality system.
That of course is simply my prediction of the future, what the real outcome will be is anyoneís guess. However games turns out in the future one thing is certain, I'll be playing as many as possible!
You know what? I didn't actually read it, but from the looks of the couple of sentences I glanced at, the english is great and looks like a sure-fire way to win a game! :D
SHOCKY
SHOCKY
WOW! A decent topic in this forum! My god am I seeing things?! :-D
Interesting... Good post too!
From year to year little appears to change. Looking at the games of last year, are they really any different to the games of today? Not really, because the games industry moves more slowly and changes are more gradual. Early Playstation games were good, but over the 5 or 6 years it has been around the quality has improved no end. The Playstation 2 may mean a quick jump up the quality ladder in terms of graphics, but this doesn't mean that the games themselves will be better?
This isn't the place to open up the whole graphics vs. gameplay issue, but just because the Playstation 2 can make better looking games it does not mean that they are actually better games in terms of fun and enjoyment. Too many games have been graphical showcases and lacked any gameplay. Games can keep on looking better but if they don't play any better we will soon get bored. Sometime around Fifa 2011 I think!!
Still, thinking back to the old computers things have moved on a lot. The turning point in my eyes was the release of the 32-bit consoles, especially the Playstation. The 8-bit computers (Commodore 64, Spectrum etc) were very basic, and games were all 2D. The 16-bit consoles while being a lot better still played 2D games. The games were the same as on the 8-bit computers just a bit better, they weren't a massive leap forward. In contrast the release of the 32-bit consoles saw a host of new genres created, for example platform games were no longer flat side scrolling affairs but full 3D adventures. The first person shooter is a very popular genre now bit before the 32 bit consoles it was only possible on the PC.
After seeing the Playstation 2 in action and previews of the upcoming XBox it seems as if these new consoles are not a massive leap forward. They play the same type of games as the Playstation, just they make them look better. So what does this mean for the future of gaming? It all depends on what you consider the word future to mean. Games aren't going to change next week, or even next year, but over the period of a few years things will change. When we played Space Invaders all those years ago who would have thought that we would be playing the games we do today, and in the same way it is difficult to foresee what is going to happen 20 years in to the future. That isn't going to stop me from trying though!!
Here is what I think for...............
The Near Future
There are two fronts to consider over the next year, notably the console situation and the PC.
The PC has a tendency to plod along, with games improving all the time and hardware doing the same. Later this year however, we are going to see a massive leap forward in the PC gaming market. The GeForce 3 by NVidia. It would be very easy to dismiss this as just another graphics card which is better than the last, and while that is true, this card has the potential to make games look infinitely better. I won't bore you with technical jargon right here, but the GeForce has programmable hardware so game designers can work wonders with it. We are talking Toy Story quality rendering in our games.
The big problem with this new card is the cost, at an expected £450 it is far from cheap and out of the range of a lot of people. Interestingly the Xbox uses GeForce 3 technology and has the potential to blow the Playstation 2 out of the water in terms of graphics. However, just having good graphics does not make a good game. If companies continue to churn out the same game just with better graphics then we are soon going to get a little bored.
The immediate future of the console market will be interesting too. People are starting to move to the next generation console and I have to admit that the original Playstation is looking very dated now. With the demise of the Sega Dreamcast Sony currently have the whole field to themselves, giving the Playstation 2 a head start. The Xbox should be out within one year and with Microsoft behind it I fail to see how it can't sell well. Yet again, however, one can't help but feel that Nintendo have missed the boat a little. People need a new console now, or next year at the latest. Their Game Cube (or whatever they call it) could be years, especially when you consider Nintendo's usual delays. I still think the Nintendo next gen console will do well, but in a similar way to the N64. It hasn't got a shot at ruling the roost, that will fall either to Sony or Microsoft.
Looking back at the previous battles you see that no company has ever managed to be top for two successive consoles. Nintendo won with their NES, then Sega with their Mega Drive, then Sony with the Playstation. However, with the Playstation being almost a household name it is always difficult to see people abandoning it. Time will surely tell, but regardless of who wins gaming is going to move on, but the question is how will gaming move on?
Looking at the next few years what changes may occur in gaming? There are a few things which we are starting to see now that should take off in the near future.
Force feedback is a technology that has been around for a long time now but hasn't really become mainstream. Years ago in the arcades Sega Rally cabinets came with a force feedback steering wheel, and then Sony pioneered the technology with their dual analogue controller on the original Playstation. It has the potential to add a lot to the gaming experience. The problem is at present the Playstation 2 controller is still the original dual shock controller, albeit with pressure sensitive buttons. Force feedback has so much more potential, for example in a driving game if skid then force feedback can make it harder for you to steer in one direction, similar to a real car.
Another area which will surely become massive is online gaming. It is already very popular on the PC with games like Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 allowing easy multiplayer battles. These are perfectly playable on a 56K modem although the faster your connection the better. The Dreamcast had the potential for online gaming but this never really took off until the console was already on its death bed. I know a lot of people who bought the console for its internet and online gaming capabilities, but most people were left frustrated by an inability to play most games online.
Online gaming really is much more fun and to for Sony to have released the Playstation 2 without it is criminal. Users will be able to buy modems for their consoles in the future and this will surely be a killer feature in deciding which console wins the next gen war. The potential for online gaming is massive, from a simple game of chess to a full online world in a RPG. I have no doubt at all that in the future online gaming will become more and more popular.
Sound is very important in gaming, and recently 3D surround sound has become popular. This uses a combination of a 4 speaker (or more) set up and special programming in the game to make more realistic sound effects. For example, if someone is walking behind you, you hear their footsteps behind you so you know where they are. Its advantage in first person shooters is obvious. This is a great step forward and one which can only become more popular and widely used in the future.
I would imagine that over the next few years games will not change massively. The full capabilities of the new consoles will be used and games will get better but I doubt there will be an major new genres created. That is not all bad however, as the current genres can be pushed and redefined. Doom may have invented the FPS but Quake 3 is so much better, and Black and White is a massive leap over all before it.
The Distant Future
Of course things will not stay the same forever, eventually there will come a point where gaming changes massively. No one knows how, but that won't stop me from throwing a few ideas around.
So far gaming only stimulates a few of our senses, sight, sound and more recently touch (with force feedback) but I think in the future smell will also be used. Imagine walking around a world an being able to smell your location too. It would open up numerous possibilities for new gaming experiences and would make a game much more engrossing. The technology may not be that far away either, I recently read of a smell printer that let you print out the smell of a pizza before you bought it online!!
Graphics will continue to get better and better but they can only go so far. Once they are the same quality as our eyes can see, then there can be no more improvements. They still have some way to go but once they become photo realistic thereís not really any further to go.
Of course of one the biggest limitations is viewing things on a flat 2D screen. A 3D monitor using some of holographic system could revolutionise gaming, as well as normal TV viewing.
Virtual reality used to be a buzz word, but recently it seems to have died somewhat. I think that when the technology allows for a better virtual reality experience that it could become very popular. The idea is that rather than watching a screen you wear a helmet so you are immersed in the world, taken to its fullest you would be in another world. Your body is wired up to detection motion and you can move around the virtual world. Imagine a first person shooter where you run with the gun, rather than just click a mouse!!
Taking this to the extreme we would have a Star Trek holosuite style situation where you were in a virtual world without the need for a helmet or suit. This is likely to be many, many years in the future, if indeed it is ever possible! Even still, we can dream...........and how good a dream it would be. You could drive an F1 car in a race and it would seem real, fly a fighter plane or re-enact the death star scene from Star Wars, all in the safety of your virtual reality system.
That of course is simply my prediction of the future, what the real outcome will be is anyoneís guess. However games turns out in the future one thing is certain, I'll be playing as many as possible!
This isn't the place to open up the whole graphics vs. gameplay issue, but just because the Playstation 2 can make better looking games it does not mean that they are actually better games in terms of fun and enjoyment. Too many games have been graphical showcases and lacked any gameplay. Games can keep on looking better but if they don't play any better we will soon get bored. Sometime around Fifa 2011 I think!!
Still, thinking back to the old computers things have moved on a lot. The turning point in my eyes was the release of the 32-bit consoles, especially the Playstation. The 8-bit computers (Commodore 64, Spectrum etc) were very basic, and games were all 2D. The 16-bit consoles while being a lot better still played 2D games. The games were the same as on the 8-bit computers just a bit better, they weren't a massive leap forward. In contrast the release of the 32-bit consoles saw a host of new genres created, for example platform games were no longer flat side scrolling affairs but full 3D adventures. The first person shooter is a very popular genre now bit before the 32 bit consoles it was only possible on the PC.
After seeing the Playstation 2 in action and previews of the upcoming XBox it seems as if these new consoles are not a massive leap forward. They play the same type of games as the Playstation, just they make them look better. So what does this mean for the future of gaming? It all depends on what you consider the word future to mean. Games aren't going to change next week, or even next year, but over the period of a few years things will change. When we played Space Invaders all those years ago who would have thought that we would be playing the games we do today, and in the same way it is difficult to foresee what is going to happen 20 years in to the future. That isn't going to stop me from trying though!!
Here is what I think for...............
The Near Future
There are two fronts to consider over the next year, notably the console situation and the PC.
The PC has a tendency to plod along, with games improving all the time and hardware doing the same. Later this year however, we are going to see a massive leap forward in the PC gaming market. The GeForce 3 by NVidia. It would be very easy to dismiss this as just another graphics card which is better than the last, and while that is true, this card has the potential to make games look infinitely better. I won't bore you with technical jargon right here, but the GeForce has programmable hardware so game designers can work wonders with it. We are talking Toy Story quality rendering in our games.
The big problem with this new card is the cost, at an expected £450 it is far from cheap and out of the range of a lot of people. Interestingly the Xbox uses GeForce 3 technology and has the potential to blow the Playstation 2 out of the water in terms of graphics. However, just having good graphics does not make a good game. If companies continue to churn out the same game just with better graphics then we are soon going to get a little bored.
The immediate future of the console market will be interesting too. People are starting to move to the next generation console and I have to admit that the original Playstation is looking very dated now. With the demise of the Sega Dreamcast Sony currently have the whole field to themselves, giving the Playstation 2 a head start. The Xbox should be out within one year and with Microsoft behind it I fail to see how it can't sell well. Yet again, however, one can't help but feel that Nintendo have missed the boat a little. People need a new console now, or next year at the latest. Their Game Cube (or whatever they call it) could be years, especially when you consider Nintendo's usual delays. I still think the Nintendo next gen console will do well, but in a similar way to the N64. It hasn't got a shot at ruling the roost, that will fall either to Sony or Microsoft.
Looking back at the previous battles you see that no company has ever managed to be top for two successive consoles. Nintendo won with their NES, then Sega with their Mega Drive, then Sony with the Playstation. However, with the Playstation being almost a household name it is always difficult to see people abandoning it. Time will surely tell, but regardless of who wins gaming is going to move on, but the question is how will gaming move on?
Looking at the next few years what changes may occur in gaming? There are a few things which we are starting to see now that should take off in the near future.
Force feedback is a technology that has been around for a long time now but hasn't really become mainstream. Years ago in the arcades Sega Rally cabinets came with a force feedback steering wheel, and then Sony pioneered the technology with their dual analogue controller on the original Playstation. It has the potential to add a lot to the gaming experience. The problem is at present the Playstation 2 controller is still the original dual shock controller, albeit with pressure sensitive buttons. Force feedback has so much more potential, for example in a driving game if skid then force feedback can make it harder for you to steer in one direction, similar to a real car.
Another area which will surely become massive is online gaming. It is already very popular on the PC with games like Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 allowing easy multiplayer battles. These are perfectly playable on a 56K modem although the faster your connection the better. The Dreamcast had the potential for online gaming but this never really took off until the console was already on its death bed. I know a lot of people who bought the console for its internet and online gaming capabilities, but most people were left frustrated by an inability to play most games online.
Online gaming really is much more fun and to for Sony to have released the Playstation 2 without it is criminal. Users will be able to buy modems for their consoles in the future and this will surely be a killer feature in deciding which console wins the next gen war. The potential for online gaming is massive, from a simple game of chess to a full online world in a RPG. I have no doubt at all that in the future online gaming will become more and more popular.
Sound is very important in gaming, and recently 3D surround sound has become popular. This uses a combination of a 4 speaker (or more) set up and special programming in the game to make more realistic sound effects. For example, if someone is walking behind you, you hear their footsteps behind you so you know where they are. Its advantage in first person shooters is obvious. This is a great step forward and one which can only become more popular and widely used in the future.
I would imagine that over the next few years games will not change massively. The full capabilities of the new consoles will be used and games will get better but I doubt there will be an major new genres created. That is not all bad however, as the current genres can be pushed and redefined. Doom may have invented the FPS but Quake 3 is so much better, and Black and White is a massive leap over all before it.
The Distant Future
Of course things will not stay the same forever, eventually there will come a point where gaming changes massively. No one knows how, but that won't stop me from throwing a few ideas around.
So far gaming only stimulates a few of our senses, sight, sound and more recently touch (with force feedback) but I think in the future smell will also be used. Imagine walking around a world an being able to smell your location too. It would open up numerous possibilities for new gaming experiences and would make a game much more engrossing. The technology may not be that far away either, I recently read of a smell printer that let you print out the smell of a pizza before you bought it online!!
Graphics will continue to get better and better but they can only go so far. Once they are the same quality as our eyes can see, then there can be no more improvements. They still have some way to go but once they become photo realistic thereís not really any further to go.
Of course of one the biggest limitations is viewing things on a flat 2D screen. A 3D monitor using some of holographic system could revolutionise gaming, as well as normal TV viewing.
Virtual reality used to be a buzz word, but recently it seems to have died somewhat. I think that when the technology allows for a better virtual reality experience that it could become very popular. The idea is that rather than watching a screen you wear a helmet so you are immersed in the world, taken to its fullest you would be in another world. Your body is wired up to detection motion and you can move around the virtual world. Imagine a first person shooter where you run with the gun, rather than just click a mouse!!
Taking this to the extreme we would have a Star Trek holosuite style situation where you were in a virtual world without the need for a helmet or suit. This is likely to be many, many years in the future, if indeed it is ever possible! Even still, we can dream...........and how good a dream it would be. You could drive an F1 car in a race and it would seem real, fly a fighter plane or re-enact the death star scene from Star Wars, all in the safety of your virtual reality system.
That of course is simply my prediction of the future, what the real outcome will be is anyoneís guess. However games turns out in the future one thing is certain, I'll be playing as many as possible!