What will gaming be like in 2020?

In the 2020s what do you think gaming will be like in that decade?

This will be your game.

@bigjeffrey: The thing about Hatsune Mikus is that you keep getting older, and they stay the same age.

Spoiler: Things will be roughly the same - just like how things were roughly the same 6 years ago...

Different. Hopefully with more lesbians.

Fucking nuts.

Dark Souls 3 and 4, Beast Souls 1, 2, and 3.

More like Hollywood movies.

You put on the videohelmet and you quickly realize that this is not just another videogame

Your entire field of vision fills with an otherworldly scene - you’re in the game!

One day will come you enter the cyberspace and you never ever want to get out

Cause reality is shit and cyberspace is God!

Atari Teenage Riot, 1992

I still hope for that. :(

That is too soon a time frame for anything to change a lot. You need o look forward 10 years to seen even substantive changes and 15 years to see major changes.

In five years ...some greater % of people will buy all games online, but physical media will still be more that 30% of all sales in North America.

In five years...there will be three major 3D headsets being sold (Oculus VR, Sony, and Samsung)

In fives years...Europe will start kicking out Apple and Microsoft in electronics/computers and giving preference to EU companies. We have had 15 years of lawsuits, fines, and rebukes. The EU will start pushing hard for Netherlands, German, French and UK companies to take over. (In 12 years we might see the first European console.)

In five years...Valve will be fighting Sony and MS on the game downloading front...and losing. Not saying they get creamed, but Sony and MS will be gaining customers while Valve is losing.

In five years...a whole owned, whole employed by native population Chinese game company will have put out a major critically acclaimed video game in N.America and Europe. (There are less than 93,000 English speakers in Japan...there are over 10,000,000 English speakers in China. My guess is China will nail making games for western audiences in a way Japan is finding it harder and harder to do.)

In five years....PS3 will have sold 108 million worldwide, Wii 103 million, and XB360 will have sold 90 million.

Why do you say this? All three are for different machines, so I don't exactly see how this is comparable.

It's my understanding that Valve has been gaining customers for quite some time, and that PC gaming has been getting more and more popular. Unless these new consoles cause PC requirements to skyrocket back into the $1000 minimum range and need upgrades every year (not likely), then I only see PC gaming gaining ground as more and more people play games and more and more become adults with jobs who want to give this whole PC building and better performance thing a go.

In the future all restaurants are Taco Bell.

Graphics will be better across the board, they will hopefully iron out some of the more annoying game mechanics by them (for the love of god, NO MORE AUDIO LOGS!).... That's all I got....

Crazy cool.

Hopefully. They have the goods. It will be a better world.

I doubt anything super dramatic will change by then. I mean sure the quality will be better, but thats about it. I highly doubt the oculus rift will ever take off in any real meaningful way, it'll be a niche item the same way big flight sim setups are.

Uh the biggest thing i think will be games being pushed much harder digitally. Granted thats limited by the internet infrastructure, so that'll get better as high speed internet becomes more common and cheaper.

Video games will still have sequels and everyone will still complain about them.

Twelve Assassin's Creed games a year.

They will have significantly tightened up the graphics.

In the year 2020, the game industry will give to me....

11 Call of Duty's

10 Dynasty Warriors

9 Halos

8 Gears of Wars

7 Final Fantasies

6 Uncharteds

5 DLCs per game

4 Season Passes

3 Online Passes

2 DRMS

.....And a Partridge in a Pear tree!

I honestly see little change from the big companies ... I suppose there will be more smaller ones but not nessesarily indi mind you , more like supergiant games (it could be argued that they are indi , but for sake of argument lets pretend they are not) , so smaller studios doing games that may not be ultra high billions of polygons realistic , but more creative art styles and stuff. Also more games will come out from Europe that isnt Ubisoft and the slavic countries. Also there will be more smaller studios from japan as the big comanies fail to change.

No really. On the hardware side, a PC and consoles are the same. They are the same hardware, they can run the same instruction sets and the difference is one is screwed/glued/bolted together and one isn't. Look up any hardware comprison chart of proposed Steamboxs and current consoles...same types of parts that anyone 'willing to' flash the bios/firmware could make run each others OS with some tinkering. That hardware has has never been so similar because we have reached a point where they are THE SAME chips that can run the same instruction sets.

But that is besides the point entirely...this is not about hardware or software but about the services.

MS and Sony are competing against Valve as they are providing a way for people to download games and playing them...except MS and Sony are doing it with an affordable box with you games written to a closer tolerance to match the hardware.

At this point Steam can boast about 7 million concurrent users (users all on at once), but XBL and PSN are gaining every year as well. Steam is growing, but so are XBL and PSN. All I'm saying is PSN and and XBL will be a problem for Steam is five years. You can like that though or not...you choice.

Shit will be all super futuristic and shit.

Still just as dumb. Probably even dumber; but still fun.

Exactly as it is today. We'll probably still be using the same consoles for the first few years, so exactly the same is the answer. 2050's, now that's interesting...

"Robots will take over the world. They will have lasers."
Jacob Eiseman, 9
Penn Valley

Considering the length of time large, technology pushing game projects take to develop, 2020 is actually only 2-3 development cycles away. It's also still in the current generation of consoles so I can't see the world being very different.

You can't simply flash the firmware to turn a Steambox into a PS4, the PS4 OS was specifically designed to work with one hardware configuration. Same with the Xbox One. These machines are not that simple.

Current consoles - the PS4 and Xbone, just so we're clear - still aren't as powerful as even a good medium range PC today. They cannot even run Battlefield 4, Titanfall, or Assassin's Creed IV at 1080p, 60FPS, on higher settings. My PC, built in 2012, can. That has to tell you something about the power of these new consoles. It's a lot better than the old ones, but it still can't scratch a proper PC, and there seems to be a lot of people who have found themselves attached to the niceties of PC gaming.

On the services side, the PSN and XBL digital libraries will not, for the most part, transfer over to the current generation of machines. That means that no one is attached to those systems by their libraries for this generation, so they might switch over to a different one. All (or the majority) of your games on Steam and Origin, on the other hand, will still work in 2020. People who have started PC gaming this generation will likely stick to PC gaming so they don't lose access to all of those games. People who have been shafted by losing all of their digital last-gen games might decide to look into this PC gaming thing.

I really don't see what your argument is. Sure, Steam, XBL, and PSN are now competitors with each other, but Valve isn't going to be losing. Too many people have found themselves dedicated to Valve for the company to start losing in any significant way by 2020 unless they seriously fuck up.

As for "affordability", a $500 gaming PC was laughable some time ago but Gamespot managed to build not one but two suitable gaming PC's for $500 a few months ago that could compete and sometimes outperform the consoles. Is the extra $100 all that much for a library that won't be scrapped when the next generation starts, games that run better and clearer, and a promise of a library so big that you'll have problems beating them all because games are so cheap? No, not really.

I can guaranty we will see a 2020 Summer Olympics Tokyo Game. and anything will be disappointingly similar to today

You know Valve has had a 100% increase in Steam users for the past, like, seven consecutive years, right?

Based on his 2nd post I don't think he cares about facts.

@shivermetimbers: I do like Partridge.

Yeah, replied before I read the rest of the thread. Sure seems that way now.

We'll still be a few years away from the next generation.

There will still be controller and maybe some VR stuff.