games™ Forum

whats the next gen brough so far?

nothing but empty wallets and happy bank managers

Hopefully the audio-visual aspects are reaching a peak this gen and devs will be able to start utilising the additional grunt to explore AI, and other interactive elements that generally take a back seat, with more depth. This in turn should lead to games finally moving in some new directions. The industry has become dangerously risk averse due to the spiralling cost of development and its having a massive effect on creativity, hopefully exploring these neglected elements will see something of a reversal.

Another potential bonus is that with this new gen being so expensive to produce, hopefully they will have a longer shelf life than previous generations allowing development time and costs to come back into balance, and giving devs the time to breath and really explore the technology before having to start working on development for the 'next' generation of machines.

With such a large proportion of users now taking their consoles online, we are starting to see consoles break out of traditional console genres and explore other types of content and media previously exclusive to the PC.

This is something of a double edged sword, while it brings unprecedented accessibility, and diversity into the consoles catalogue and allows for user created content, devs to revisit their back catalogue, and a new world of interactive potential for multi-player titles, it also brings the potential for microtransactions, pay per play, and value added content which is a step backward for gamers but incredibly lucrative for publishers.

On the plus side though, digital distribution is much kinder to the environment which is probably the hook they will use when they start the unpopular push toward these methods for mainstream, wholesale distribution in earnest.