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I Have often wondered where gaming is going, what it heading towards and how it has reached where it is now from its humble beginnings. Gaming has progressed from being a cult activity based in dank lofts with very slow machines and enormous loading times to a fully accepted part of todayís culture.
Gaming started off with machines such as the Spectrum and games that people can hardly remember anymore, except Pong which of course everyone remembers, and has improved and travelled along its winding journey ever since. Gaming has gone through many different ports of call, some good e.g. the SNES and the Playstation, and some undeniably poor consoles such as the Lynx. Overall though, gaming has dramatically improved over the years to become the phenomenon that it is now.
Some strange things have happened upon its journey. Many manufacturers of consoles have dropped by the wayside, discarded by gaming like chocolate wrappers. Most notable occurrences in gaming of recent times have to be Metal Gear Solid and of course Segaís exit from console production to become a games developer.
What does the future hold in store for Gaming? Its decline? An even more dramatic upsurge in popularity? Who knows? What we do know however is the general direction that gaming is pointing in. It is towards PC gaming with the advent of modems, keyboards, mice and hard-drives. It is hurtling away from its roots at an alarming speed in its quest to become a worldwide spectacle ensuring that not one home is missing a games console or entertainment machine as they like to be called now, Pah! This somewhat shortsighted urge to make consoles and gaming as worldwide as TVs, VCRs and DVDs amazes me.
I mean why bother with all this stuff? We play games on consoles more than PCís because consoles are made for playing games. They have the best games, they give the best experiences and they are the best machines for playing games on. So why change? Why attempt to change a successful, tried and tested idea? What will these ëadvancesí bring to us?
Lets see:
Hard drive and modem-Hmmm, makes us shell out more money for something we think we want and need. We will supposedly eventually be able to download entire games from the Internet by paying the developers for a download. Oh yes, what a joy, now instead of spending obscene amount of cash on games from a shop we will be able to pay our money for something we canít even see let alone touch. Excellent! I will be first in line for this pleasure. Oh and what are the gains of such a system. Well most obviously we do not have to undertake the chore of leaving our houses. Yes, we can become social recluses. No longer will we have to venture out into the scary world. Our next-gen consoles will do it for us.
Mouse and Keyboard-Yes! Now we can turn our consoles into fully-fledged PC's. Wow I have always wanted to do that. With the sales of these peripherals will also come a free how to speak like a PC geek guide along with a wipe clean poster of the embodiment of PCís the great bowl headed one, Mr Bill Gates himself. Excellent! I completely change my mind this is a good thing.
For those of you not too sharp on sarcasm that was about as good as it gets.
Now on a more serious note what good things will come out of gamings imminent move to the PC's side? Well, multi-player gaming will be fun if we all had the same connections and ping rates, but lets face it we wonít have. Perhaps a hard-drive could be used to import MP3 files and pictures of our-self into our games but is this really worth £200, I think not. The improvement of games is already evident and this is brilliant but the move into PC territory and making GAMES consoles into home entertainment systemsí is bound to be a bad move that could ruin gaming.
Gaming started off with machines such as the Spectrum and games that people can hardly remember anymore, except Pong which of course everyone remembers, and has improved and travelled along its winding journey ever since. Gaming has gone through many different ports of call, some good e.g. the SNES and the Playstation, and some undeniably poor consoles such as the Lynx. Overall though, gaming has dramatically improved over the years to become the phenomenon that it is now.
Some strange things have happened upon its journey. Many manufacturers of consoles have dropped by the wayside, discarded by gaming like chocolate wrappers. Most notable occurrences in gaming of recent times have to be Metal Gear Solid and of course Segaís exit from console production to become a games developer.
What does the future hold in store for Gaming? Its decline? An even more dramatic upsurge in popularity? Who knows? What we do know however is the general direction that gaming is pointing in. It is towards PC gaming with the advent of modems, keyboards, mice and hard-drives. It is hurtling away from its roots at an alarming speed in its quest to become a worldwide spectacle ensuring that not one home is missing a games console or entertainment machine as they like to be called now, Pah! This somewhat shortsighted urge to make consoles and gaming as worldwide as TVs, VCRs and DVDs amazes me.
I mean why bother with all this stuff? We play games on consoles more than PCís because consoles are made for playing games. They have the best games, they give the best experiences and they are the best machines for playing games on. So why change? Why attempt to change a successful, tried and tested idea? What will these ëadvancesí bring to us?
Lets see:
Hard drive and modem-Hmmm, makes us shell out more money for something we think we want and need. We will supposedly eventually be able to download entire games from the Internet by paying the developers for a download. Oh yes, what a joy, now instead of spending obscene amount of cash on games from a shop we will be able to pay our money for something we canít even see let alone touch. Excellent! I will be first in line for this pleasure. Oh and what are the gains of such a system. Well most obviously we do not have to undertake the chore of leaving our houses. Yes, we can become social recluses. No longer will we have to venture out into the scary world. Our next-gen consoles will do it for us.
Mouse and Keyboard-Yes! Now we can turn our consoles into fully-fledged PC's. Wow I have always wanted to do that. With the sales of these peripherals will also come a free how to speak like a PC geek guide along with a wipe clean poster of the embodiment of PCís the great bowl headed one, Mr Bill Gates himself. Excellent! I completely change my mind this is a good thing.
For those of you not too sharp on sarcasm that was about as good as it gets.
Now on a more serious note what good things will come out of gamings imminent move to the PC's side? Well, multi-player gaming will be fun if we all had the same connections and ping rates, but lets face it we wonít have. Perhaps a hard-drive could be used to import MP3 files and pictures of our-self into our games but is this really worth £200, I think not. The improvement of games is already evident and this is brilliant but the move into PC territory and making GAMES consoles into home entertainment systemsí is bound to be a bad move that could ruin gaming.
We don't need gaming to move closer to PCs BECAUSE WE ALREADY HAVE PCS!!
Consoles going online is a bit different to PCs being online, with it being more about offering an even more affordable way of playing over the net (with consoles costing under £200).
Still, the way tech specs are improving we're going to get the best of both worlds - super realistic football sims and wrestling games, and even prettier visuals and bigger worlds for stuff like the new game from the Ico team, and Zelda.
Consoles going online is a bit different to PCs being online, with it being more about offering an even more affordable way of playing over the net (with consoles costing under £200).
Still, the way tech specs are improving we're going to get the best of both worlds - super realistic football sims and wrestling games, and even prettier visuals and bigger worlds for stuff like the new game from the Ico team, and Zelda.
I Have often wondered where gaming is going, what it heading towards and how it has reached where it is now from its humble beginnings. Gaming has progressed from being a cult activity based in dank lofts with very slow machines and enormous loading times to a fully accepted part of todayís culture.
Gaming started off with machines such as the Spectrum and games that people can hardly remember anymore, except Pong which of course everyone remembers, and has improved and travelled along its winding journey ever since. Gaming has gone through many different ports of call, some good e.g. the SNES and the Playstation, and some undeniably poor consoles such as the Lynx. Overall though, gaming has dramatically improved over the years to become the phenomenon that it is now.
Some strange things have happened upon its journey. Many manufacturers of consoles have dropped by the wayside, discarded by gaming like chocolate wrappers. Most notable occurrences in gaming of recent times have to be Metal Gear Solid and of course Segaís exit from console production to become a games developer.
What does the future hold in store for Gaming? Its decline? An even more dramatic upsurge in popularity? Who knows? What we do know however is the general direction that gaming is pointing in. It is towards PC gaming with the advent of modems, keyboards, mice and hard-drives. It is hurtling away from its roots at an alarming speed in its quest to become a worldwide spectacle ensuring that not one home is missing a games console or entertainment machine as they like to be called now, Pah! This somewhat shortsighted urge to make consoles and gaming as worldwide as TVs, VCRs and DVDs amazes me.
I mean why bother with all this stuff? We play games on consoles more than PCís because consoles are made for playing games. They have the best games, they give the best experiences and they are the best machines for playing games on. So why change? Why attempt to change a successful, tried and tested idea? What will these ëadvancesí bring to us?
Lets see:
Hard drive and modem-Hmmm, makes us shell out more money for something we think we want and need. We will supposedly eventually be able to download entire games from the Internet by paying the developers for a download. Oh yes, what a joy, now instead of spending obscene amount of cash on games from a shop we will be able to pay our money for something we canít even see let alone touch. Excellent! I will be first in line for this pleasure. Oh and what are the gains of such a system. Well most obviously we do not have to undertake the chore of leaving our houses. Yes, we can become social recluses. No longer will we have to venture out into the scary world. Our next-gen consoles will do it for us.
Mouse and Keyboard-Yes! Now we can turn our consoles into fully-fledged PC's. Wow I have always wanted to do that. With the sales of these peripherals will also come a free how to speak like a PC geek guide along with a wipe clean poster of the embodiment of PCís the great bowl headed one, Mr Bill Gates himself. Excellent! I completely change my mind this is a good thing.
For those of you not too sharp on sarcasm that was about as good as it gets.
Now on a more serious note what good things will come out of gamings imminent move to the PC's side? Well, multi-player gaming will be fun if we all had the same connections and ping rates, but lets face it we wonít have. Perhaps a hard-drive could be used to import MP3 files and pictures of our-self into our games but is this really worth £200, I think not. The improvement of games is already evident and this is brilliant but the move into PC territory and making GAMES consoles into home entertainment systemsí is bound to be a bad move that could ruin gaming.
Gaming started off with machines such as the Spectrum and games that people can hardly remember anymore, except Pong which of course everyone remembers, and has improved and travelled along its winding journey ever since. Gaming has gone through many different ports of call, some good e.g. the SNES and the Playstation, and some undeniably poor consoles such as the Lynx. Overall though, gaming has dramatically improved over the years to become the phenomenon that it is now.
Some strange things have happened upon its journey. Many manufacturers of consoles have dropped by the wayside, discarded by gaming like chocolate wrappers. Most notable occurrences in gaming of recent times have to be Metal Gear Solid and of course Segaís exit from console production to become a games developer.
What does the future hold in store for Gaming? Its decline? An even more dramatic upsurge in popularity? Who knows? What we do know however is the general direction that gaming is pointing in. It is towards PC gaming with the advent of modems, keyboards, mice and hard-drives. It is hurtling away from its roots at an alarming speed in its quest to become a worldwide spectacle ensuring that not one home is missing a games console or entertainment machine as they like to be called now, Pah! This somewhat shortsighted urge to make consoles and gaming as worldwide as TVs, VCRs and DVDs amazes me.
I mean why bother with all this stuff? We play games on consoles more than PCís because consoles are made for playing games. They have the best games, they give the best experiences and they are the best machines for playing games on. So why change? Why attempt to change a successful, tried and tested idea? What will these ëadvancesí bring to us?
Lets see:
Hard drive and modem-Hmmm, makes us shell out more money for something we think we want and need. We will supposedly eventually be able to download entire games from the Internet by paying the developers for a download. Oh yes, what a joy, now instead of spending obscene amount of cash on games from a shop we will be able to pay our money for something we canít even see let alone touch. Excellent! I will be first in line for this pleasure. Oh and what are the gains of such a system. Well most obviously we do not have to undertake the chore of leaving our houses. Yes, we can become social recluses. No longer will we have to venture out into the scary world. Our next-gen consoles will do it for us.
Mouse and Keyboard-Yes! Now we can turn our consoles into fully-fledged PC's. Wow I have always wanted to do that. With the sales of these peripherals will also come a free how to speak like a PC geek guide along with a wipe clean poster of the embodiment of PCís the great bowl headed one, Mr Bill Gates himself. Excellent! I completely change my mind this is a good thing.
For those of you not too sharp on sarcasm that was about as good as it gets.
Now on a more serious note what good things will come out of gamings imminent move to the PC's side? Well, multi-player gaming will be fun if we all had the same connections and ping rates, but lets face it we wonít have. Perhaps a hard-drive could be used to import MP3 files and pictures of our-self into our games but is this really worth £200, I think not. The improvement of games is already evident and this is brilliant but the move into PC territory and making GAMES consoles into home entertainment systemsí is bound to be a bad move that could ruin gaming.