How do you expect the next gen will compare to this one?

Do you think you'll have more fun in the next generation than in this one? Will it be better? Why?

Share your predictions!

More of the same.

It's gonna be the bomb diggity

I hope so. At this point just getting new consoles and tech is fun in itself for me. It's been so long since this generation started that I feel really starved of this kind of anticipation and wonder. For the games themselves, I'm not very picky when it comes to genres I love. As long as some solid rpgs and strategy games get released in the coming years I'll be very happy.

I expect shit to work better and the timed exclusives and exclusive DLC crap to be worse. And the games themselves to continue on quality wise from the current gen, rather than start over with launch tier and steadily getting more refined.

I also expect more decent PC ports. Well, maybe that's just a hope rather than an expectation.

If they continue with this triple AAA generic bull shit nonsense, I doubt very well.

Games will look better and be bigger.

That's good enough for me.

The tech will be much better, but business models will get progressively worse in response to game development getting more costly. I fully expect microtransactions in every EA and Activision game next generation, and wouldn't be surprised to see some of the bigger publishers try to roll out extra subscription fees related to their games (making COD Elite mandatory for instance). It's going to be a very desperate attempt to wring money out of the consumer at every turn, which will probably lead to even lower sales and the collapse of a lot more developers and publishers.

Social media! Micro-transactions! Insert buzz word here!

I think the industry will contract, coinciding with rising game development costs. I predict that will result in a whole lot of pay-to-win, DLC-that-should-have-been-in-the-main-game, subscriptions, punishing people for buying used games and reliance on a ever-decreasing number of blockbuster franchises, like a lot of people before me have said.

More of the same with more gimmicks!

I'm confident I will have less fun.

But that's more about me than it is about the "state of the industry".

Games will look and play the same.

Less people will get into games.

Nintendo will release their next console early (3-4 years from now), it will be a hybrid portable/home console, i.e. you will be able to plug it into a tv and it will connect to regular controllers wirelessly and be a fully functional home console.

The next gen will be the last for a games focused Microsoft console, they will move towards a streaming box/indie game device similar to the Ouya.

Sony will "win" an extremely lame duck generation.

EA will sell the "EA Sports" brand in a desperate move, the rest of EA will fall apart soon after; EA Sports will be the better for it though.

Blizzard's next MMO "Titan" will be their first flop, cannibalize their WoW subscriber base and will signal the end of MMOs popularity.

Dragon Age 3 will be inexplicably awesome.

The one thing that I hope the next generation manages to do is figure out money. This is already kinda happening, but I wish budgets were more varied than "the cost of a sandwich" and "all the money in the world."

This is almost exactly the opposite of what will happen.

I want to see with all this new power to play with what the big developers like Naughty Dog, Bethesda Softworks, Epic, Bioware, id Software, Kojima Productions and also Rockstar will make with it. I love great single player experiences and I'm hoping the next generation will provide me with higher quality living breathing worlds with advance A.I. and physics.

Better hopefully.

I figure they probably have a strong understanding of how anything online related should work by now and be able to offer something that is good and not just functional but still a pain to use in many cases.

Also the hardware is likely to be very similar between the two consoles which means higher quality across the board for multiplatform games. No more "we couldn't be bothered to make our game work right on this exoctic hardware that the dumbass who made the console thought was a good idea in the first place".

Video games will come out and I'll probably continue to play them or something, I dunno.

Agreed. Most games now are completely forgettable even if there's nothing wrong with the individual game itself. We're at the point that a well made game just doesn't cut it when there are plenty of other high quality, yet similar games coming out yearly.

More open levels .... please do them :(

no more Call of dutyfication

Or just the same stuff but prettier (not by much tho)

More expensive.

The Death of gaming as we know it

yep, what i was thinking.

companies are going to try micro transaction things. news is EA is going to be doing that with their games. companies are going to try to follow that also. hopefully people won't do that so companies will stop.

It won't be the big leap as before. It will just be that everything will be a bit better in visuals, scope, ect. For example instead of 25 npc's on screen, there will be 50-100.

I see the triple A business getting even more slimy and the game stagnate more. Meanwhile the indie scene grows and grows.

Better graphics, more social experiences, more bullshit from big companies while smaller companies continue to die.

meh- it'll be fine. the more toxic and vapid the environment gets, the more that will drive indies and small teams to produce games that stand in direct opposition to those. the money and budgets might go away, but there's very few huge-budget games that excite me anyway. the games i'm currently most anticipating are The Banner Saga and Star Citizen. both of which aren't tiny, but also come from a new generation of game development (in terms of how the investment money was raised, how they're releasing, etc).

edit: i'm realizing now i'm presenting a fairly pc-centric view...i actually have no idea how the consoles will shake out. they very much have to prove the worth of their existence in a way that they haven't for awhile...pc gaming might not get any bigger, but i think it'll continue to be a haven for indies.

I've got a gaming PC now, so when I inevitably buy the new consoles too, I'll finally have the best of both worlds.

For one thing, the console wars will start over (... again). Also, there will be no excuse to not release games on multi-platform now that all systems will be running on x-86. With that said, the glorious PC master race will receive less shitty console ports this time around.

It's going to be the same. The only difference can be the layout of the consoles and the controllers.

I just really hope that developers will use the new hardware to make some meaningful innovations, and take some chances on new IPs and game play ideas rather than just making GENERIC FPS #227 prettier and more populous.

It will look better and hopefully have better games.