This might be a stupid question but do you feel that in 10-20 years pc gaming will still be as large as it is now or do you think console gaming will take over.

I would predict that in 10-20 years neither market will exist as we know it today.

I really have no idea.

I do know consoles won''t stand a chance of taking over unless mice and keyboards become standard equipment for ''em.

maybe i''m just a weirdo, but i predict laptops will win.. which reminds me, toshiba has a model with a geforce chip in it.. hmm... the future is now boys..

quote: Original post by Hikeeba
I do know consoles won''t stand a chance of taking over unless mice and keyboards become standard equipment for ''em.

And if mice and keyboards are no longer "standard equipment", what then? In the future we will have interface devices and methods that are more approrpiate for the way we perceive our world and the things we desire to do in it: perhaps 3D holographic displays; voice command in noisy environments; artificial intelligence as an integral part of the "operating system" such that rather than manually filling out that spreadsheet one might, from time to time, show sales or inventory figures (those that aren''t entered directly into an electronic database) to the computer, which will take care of all menial duties.

We''re talking about ten to twenty years in the future here; dream big! Gamepads, joysticks, wheels and other current input devices will be gone except for nostalgia/retro games. Most environments will be VR, and nervous system interfaces may have sufficiently advanced (beyond theory and into practice) that one might be made to "feel" any sensation by appropirate stimulation of the brain (Holy Force Feedback, Batman!)

It seems to me like many of the "designers" on these forums don''t read enough science fiction and science fantasy; those two genres are important for industries such as videogaming which rely on the creation of the improbable or unattainable, or "substitution" - placing the gamer in a possible but remote role such as super athlete - for a steady stream of ideas. So go read some books, people! The industry''s stagnating...

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Those who can do nothing criticize; those who can, critique.

hmmmm...hasnt console gaming has already taken over?, im pretty sure its worth much more than the PC game market. PC market is actually pretty weak comparitevly. There are still certain types of game that only work well on a PC though, and thats not likely to change till someone is bright enough to release a console with a mouse.. it should be pretty easy to do now that we have optical mice that will work on any surface.

The New Infrastructure is nearly always built on the Old Infrastructure.

Go back 10-20 years...what''s different?

PCs are cheaper for the performance, and graphical displays are greatly enhanced...but keyboards are still keyboards, mice are still mice, and joysticks are still joysticks. And if you remove the glitz of 3D accellerators and flat plasma screens, monitors are still monitors.

The Internet existed 10 years...even 20 years ago...but it wasn''t a commercial enterprise then. Still...the protocol it''s based on is decades old.

10 years ago most of the dominant console game makers already existed. 20 years ago, the Atari and similar consoles already existed.

Windows 3.1 was released 10 years ago. Hell...Windows 95 was 6 years ago.

Are things superficially different? Yup. Nearly everywhere.

But are things fundamentally different? Not really.

So what''s in the future?
* Incremental improvement of existing technology.
* Better use of existing technology.

Most "revolution" is "evolution", but with better publicists.


DavidRM
Samu Games

Well as computer performance evolves so does the likelihood of being able to implement different technologies. 20 years ago a mouse was not much different from a mouse is today, but they were barely used because the operating systems were mostly text based. 20 years from now the virtual reality devices may not be a whole lot different than the high-end VR devices that you find around the world today. What will be different is the understanding of how to use them and the power to use them effectively. And the ability to make them cheaper for the average joe.

Why do very few games use VR today?

Not because it is not a good idea but because it is not practical to implement it. The performance is just not there yet for mainstream users. But VR is used very successfully by military organizations around the world who have the budgets to pay millions for equipment. 20 years ago how much would it have cost to purchase a computer with the power of a P4 today? Certainly atleast as much as one of these VR supercomputers cost today. And you don''t need an 18-wheeler to move a P4 like you would have 20 years ago.

The Internet was there a long time ago, but the ability to put it to good use was not. We cry today when pages take longer than 10 seconds to load on a 56k modem. Imagine surfing at 300baud. It would take more than 10 seconds to download the metatags of an average webpage.

Multimedia was around 20 years ago but the power to use it was not. I have a 20MB hard drive in my closet that cost me $1200 and is the size of a cinder block. That would hold 4 decent MP3 files or half of a full-length .wav song. And it would have taken about 30 minutes to load the WAV file into memory, except that there was no computer available with that much memory at the time nor was there an affordable means to record a song to a computer. All we had was some beeps and buzzes from our internal speakers.

If you think about it the mouse and keyboard suck for playing games. Gamers want reality. There is nothing realistic about moving a mouse to aim your weapon, or using your keyboard or joystick to move around. It is widely used because it is the best solution at this time. I think most gamers would rather physically aim their VR weapon than to slide a mouse around in a FPS game. They had physical guns to aim in games a long time ago, but you are constrained to aiming the gun at the screen which pretty much defeats the realism of it.

RTS may move in a different direction. VR probably won''t play as big a role there, but voice recognition and touchscreens might. More realistic and easier to use. Already I see voice recognition becoming a part of gaming with the Microsoft GameVoice which maps voice commands to keystrokes in your games as well as serving as a great communication device for multiplayer games. You''ll be shouting commands to your troops instead of pointing and clicking.

I see these things becoming more mainstream within the next 5 years who knows what the situation could be like in 20?

Just my 2 cents

Krippy

Some goofy ideas:
What if they had an input device (one that''s simple to understand/use) that combines all the ones we use now (keyboard,mouse,gamepad) into a single device? If hardware components could be made smaller (as well as faster and with greater capacity) the computer would be part of the input device (I''m kind of thinking of something similar to a laptop configuration). With wireless technology maybe you wouldn''t need a computer monitor because the thing could use any available display device, like a tv monitor or whatever.

"A man can''t just sit around." ''Lawn Chair'' Larry Walters (1982)

Computers that use an already available visual devices such as TVs are called Apples. I use my monitor to watch TV, video tapes and DVDs because it''s a cleaner picture. TVs only do 640x480 and the dot pitch is horrible.

You can buy electronic kits that broadcast UHF. All you need is a TV-out for your computer. Hook a reciever up to a head mounted display and you''re all set. Mix that signal with a virtual keyboard and view with the Nintendo Powerglove and you''re all set.

To move the cursor you just move the glove across the virtual screen and to type you just hit the virtual keys.

Ben
http://therabbithole.redback.inficad.com