Editorials

The next decade in gaming

March 22, 2010, Author: Ray Willmott

Touch Screen: Right Now
Not just in computer games and consoles, but in mobile phones and MP3 players, touch screen is grabbing everyone’s attention and is fast becoming the best way to navigate handheld technology. Nintendo, seemingly on the ball, implemented a touch screen to their Nintendo DS system in 2004. In addition to having two screens to play your games on, the bottom screen can be navigated using a small pen called the stylus, and can even be used to determine in-game choices. This began to print money for the system and easily trebled and even quadrupled the sales to that of its rival, the PSP, which offered a new format to watch movies on and USB and SD support.

Right now, the DS is still the most popular handheld on the market and is on for its forth realisation in the DSi XL. The system continues to sell well, six years on from its original release. The touch screen feature, ever as popular as it was before, but now implementing new technology, such as the inbuilt camera, where you can take a picture of yourself, and manipulate it in many crazy and creative ways using the stylus.

You also need to consider the iPod touch and iPhone when talking about touch screen. The model has quickly garnered a comprehensive catalogue of games and has established itself as a popular platform to play Peggle, classic Point and Click Games like Broken Sword and original I:Ps such as Spider.

The touch screen has evolved from just Blackberry’s and expensive mobile phones, to becoming an important and integral way for us to play our games. Making gem cascades and surfing through dialogue has never been so easy, so much so, that some people cannot imagine playing a game without it.

Touch Screen: To Come
Touch Screen will continue to be an important navigational and gaming tool that is only going to get bigger and better, more widespread and more accurate. The user-base is large right now and it seems that games and utilities list compatible with touch screen technology will just continue to grow.

Touch screen is here to stay and is going to improve again and again. As technology progresses, we’re liable to see Minority Report style interfaces where you drag through menus with the tips of your fingers and selecting your choices.

It won’t stop with the Stylus.

Motion Sensitive Control: Right Now
There’s no doubt about it, in the last decade; Nintendo have forever revolutionised the way we will be playing computer games in the years to come. They have put together many remarkable concepts over the years, such as the Rumble Pack and the analog control, but over the last ten years, it seems Nintendo have had their finest hour. The Nintendo Wii is far and away, the most financially successful console this generation and perhaps of all time. The ability to hold a remote in your hand, move and waggle it around carefree and having your gestures reflected on your television set has enabled developers to create many wild and wacky concepts and introduced gaming to casual audiences the world over. We’ve reached a stage in development where true virtual reality is finally starting to come into place and this is the first step.

Even though the games catalogue may not suggest it, I think it’s fair to say that the Nintendo Wii is the most important console made since the original NES in the 80’s.

In some ways, the concept isn’t new. PC users have been able to move a mouse for years now, and the movement of the mouse by your hand is reflected on screen by a pointer. However, the mouse is confined to a desktop space and is dependent on a surface. The Wii remote is more free-roaming than that and the only surface required is the ball of your hand to make sure it doesn’t sail through your television set (such as I accomplished two years ago… ahem… ).

Of course, the technology of the Wii has evolved to the ultra-popular balance board, otherwise known as the peripheral for Wii Fit, and enabled users to workout from the comfort of their own living rooms with the board detecting your movements through its highly sensitive recognition pads. The system is so successful, stories of people losing weight from the game have flooded in all over the web (my mum lost nearly three stone with a combination of Wii Fit and healthy eating), and even You Tube videos of a girl’s ass jigging when playing Wii Fit have made careers in the industry.

According to Nintendo, this is just the beginning.

Motion control can also be attributed somewhat to the Xbox Vision Camera and the Playstation Eye, although not on as much of a grand scale. The Playstation Eye has created some cool games such as the Eye of Judgement and the Eye Pet, introducing greater interactivity within the home and allowing you to become the game you play, through your actions. Both also allow you to take a photo of yourself and the game digitally remakes you into a character within the game, see Tiger Woods Golf and Facebreaker.

However, the days of the gamepad and the gadgets we use to control our games could be dated and God only knows what we’ll be using to play come 2020.

Motion Sensitive Control: To Come
Seriously, the sky is the limit. Nintendo took a chance with the Wii and it has paid dividends for them. Because of that success, it has prompted industry giants Microsoft and Sony to wade their way in with their own variation of the concept, Project Natal and the Arc, Wand, Globe, Lollypop, Snow Cone whatever Sony have decided to call their motion peripheral this week. Microsoft have already said that they are going to invest a lot of time and money in Project Natal and are even treating it as importantly as a console launch, saying that the idea will extend the lifespan of the 360 for at least another five years. Sony are the same and are ensuring there is a solid line-up of titles in place for the launch of their variation.

From that point on, who knows? One thing is for certain, motion control is going to factor into the next generation of consoles, most likely from the outset. The casual gaming nation has quadrupled and is going to be keeping up to speed with the latest news with their newest fascination, seeing what’s available and where technology can progress from here. It has become as essential to the console as a rumble in your pad or an analog stick to control the action. There will be strives to improve the technology over the next ten years and probably by the time 2020 rolls around, we will be as close to precision as we can be, but by then there will probably be a greater focus on expanding the tech, as opposed to refining it.

Peripherals are coming out all the time that are requiring the gamer to go beyond the pad and explore other possibilities. From Tony Hawk’s RIDE to Guitar and DJ Hero, we are going to continue to see additional expenses that offer different experiences. It is difficult to fathom just how far this can be taken, and surely over the next ten years we will witness the revolutionary and almost certainly, the underwhelming. However, whether you like it or you don’t, motion based gaming is the way the industry is going and the way we play our computers is never going to be the same again, for better or for worse.

Other notable innovations from the noughties.

Avatars or Mii’s.
Seems like every console and every profile on that console has to have an avatar attached to it that looks ever so slightly similar to you. This phenomenon seems to have made its way into every console and on every downloadable service based system to give you some identity in the gaming world. It’s even got so popular as to have people buying clothes for their characters (with real money) and dressing them in everything from Nike gear to having them masquerade as a Big Daddy from Bioshock.

Achievements, Accolades and Trophies
It’s an in-thing to have a collection of trophies to show off to your friends or an incredibly large gamerscore to boast about. It’s even become the thing to do to compare your list to a friend’s and see what you’ve unlocked that they haven’t, to see whose getting the most out of their game. Also, in combination with the above, avatar unlockables have been introduced so that in certain games, you can unlock some set requirements to acquire clothing for your character. Saves you paying four pound for a lightsaber, anyway.

There’s always more to consider and the revolutions in gaming over the last ten years are not constricted to the headings I’ve mentioned above. However, these will give some small indication as to where we are and where we’re going to go. Ultimately, the future is uncertain, but what lies ahead at these very early stages of the decade is enough to make one ponder as to what will come next.

Have a differing opinion? Any other thoughts and feelings you’d like to offer? Please discuss…

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Tagged Achievements, Avatars, Nintendo DS, PSN, This Is My Joystick, Wii, XBLA