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The Evolution & Future of the Gaming Platform
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1970 – 1980: Premature platforms like arcade games in malls or local pubs. Very unsophisticated console platforms.
1990: Development of graphic engines that made 3D more realistic. Hardware (PCs) became more affordable. Game consoles came in.
2000: Game consoles started becoming cheaper and with broadband, gamers could compete from anywhere in the World.
Future: Virtual reality based games seem to be the next step. The technologies seem viable. Something else one may see is that mobile consoles and hand helds will deliver a gaming experience as good as those that consoles currently provide. Combine that with the fact that WiMax in the future will be able to make handhelds equally interactive as well.
As of now the trends seem to be towards:
- Competition: Users need to compete
- First player experiences: Users need to feel like the person in the game. That has been the tred with Counter Strike, Hitman, Flight Simulator etc. The trend started with Doom in 1993 and has continued.
Apart from first player games sports games have also been popular since a while. They can be treated as a separate category within gaming altogether. Sports games have more options to utilize the online platform because a sport essentially is about competition. The real time experience where users can feel ‘closer’ to their sporting heroes gives more reasons for consumers to keep playing.
I think another category in gaming that will develop an industry by itself will be that of role-playing games. Second Life gives a hint of all this. The idea is to take the user into a fantasy World where the user determines the course of the game. The user sets targets, weaves a story and sort of entertains himself for as long as he likes. The scale of such games are higher because the game is really unbound – there are infinite possibilities. An entire WORLD has to be created.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Wii has shown that casual gaming will also co exist. Casual games are easy to play, and not too graphic and complicated. This has attracted a lot of female gamers. Casual games are now expanding to a platform where users can learn stuff, play an instrument, exercise etc. Consider Rock Band Pro and such other items, which have been sold out in the United States.
A very niche sector of ‘serious gaming’ has also evolved where users play games that are designed to sharpen certain skill sets. Eg. Games could be commissioned by corporates in the future where playing the game could actually upgrade an employee’s management acumen. The possibilities are immense and expect this to be a high margin niche.
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