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Sponsored: The Art Of Gaming has Moved Up A Level

by on April 29, 2016
 

Gaming has changed dramatically over the last few decades. They called the early ‘80s the golden era of gaming. With Space Invaders and Pacman, Donkey Kong and Frogger; it is an era which will never be beaten. An era in which Street Fighter would be the closest representation of karate kicking someone without actually having a fight in the street.

But how wrong they were.

Today, more people than ever before play video games – 155 million in the US only, according to the ESA Essential Facts report for 2015. Plus, gaming is more realistic than ever, with some footage even being confused with real life.

‘Is that actually Lionel Messi circling Tim Howard?’ you’d be thinking. But no, it’s just the latest in the FIFA franchise. And what’s more, technology is only getting better.

Every year at CES we’re blessed with further technological advances to get us excited, and boy have they delivered. As we get further and further into 2016, we’re noticing more and more releases which could transform gaming once more.

There’s becoming a host of new ways to play video games away from the Xbox, PlayStation, and even mobile. So what will we be playing on this time next year or even further into the future?

We take a look at the impressive new ways we’ll be gaming sooner rather than later…

Virtual Reality

 

Of course, there’s no better place to start than with virtual reality.

Back in the first golden era of gaming, VR was sent out into the world and  – to be blunt – it nose-dived quicker than the ET game – most copies of which are now buried in a landfill in New Mexico – with Sega’s first virtual reality efforts released in 1992 in arcades before it cancelled them for apparently being “too realistic”. That is unlikely judging by today’s standards, particularly with the poor processors of the time. Nintendo’s Virtual Boy followed to yet more disappointment.

But fast forward to 2013, and it was a different story.

CES welcomed Oculus Rift that year and there’s been huge anticipation for the return of virtual reality ever since – in fact, so much so that Facebook bought Oculus for $2billion one year later.

Sony and Google also entered the fold with Playstation VR and Magic Leap respectively, with Google pumping $500million into the latter. Magic Leap’s augmented reality and VR combo – now dubbed “mixed reality” implementations have impressed in the latest demos:

It’s Sony’s efforts, however, which seem to be causing the most excitement. Not only does the Plastation VR aim to take virtual reality to the next level, but also make it more social. A smart move, considering that 56% of gamers play with others and 54% play multiplayer mode at least once a week.

Dave Ranyard, head of Sony London said, “There’s this kind of sci-fi view of VR being about isolation, but we want to turn that on its head. “We’ve made a lot of local multiplayer games – SingStar, EyeToy, etc – and we’re actively using some of the things we’ve learned from them.”

Social Gaming

 

And he’s not alone in wanting to make games more social. It’s become a big market and is certainly here to stay. The likes of Candy Crush and Farmville over the last few years have been huge on Facebook and they’ve inspired plenty of brands to make their own moves into social gaming.

Of course, it stretches way beyond that, with the likes of LAN helping games like DOOM and Quake extremely popular, but social media has introduced the format to a whole new audience.

So much so that Candy Crush has been downloaded over half a billion times, compared to Xbox Live which only has around 48 million members – to use Microsoft’s numbers. It’s certain that social and sharable games are the future, particularly if the PlayStation is even getting involved in new ways; if the games and content are interesting enough, they’ll be shared in the thousands.

Mobile Tie-Ins

Which is why brands are producing some really cool stuff right now. All sorts of new spins on games are taking off and some really original ideas are being shared across the globe.

One trend we have seen growing strong in the last few years is major games developers bringing interesting tie-ins of popular games and new flavors of their franchises to smartphones.

Bethesda’s Fallout is a great example. Together with Fallout 4 and is DLCs released on Windows, Xbox One and Playstation 4, we saw post-apocalyptic vault management come to life on our iPhones and Androids in Fallout Shelter.

Another brand to find a new way to approach smartphones is PokerStars. The popular online poker room has had its pro Chris Moneymaker introduce the PokerStars Duel app for smartphones. Combining casual gaming with traditional poker, Duel will pits players against their friends, allowing them to compete in a head-to-head poker match instead of regular poker.

As far as impressive reboots of popular franchises go, we certainly look up to Square Enix/Crystal Dynamics’ Tomb Raider franchise reboot. Along with Rise of the Tomb Raider, released last November to glowing reviews, we also saw the release of Lara Croft Go, a great turn-based puzzle iOS/Android game which would have been a great choice if it wasn’t part of the groundbreaking franchise. Still, the attention-to-detail makes this a gem of an addition to the Lara Croft games.

Moving Forward

In 1994, we welcomed a new face to the console world, the Sony PlayStation. It set alight the console world and has spawned four other generations in its 20 years with us. The latest, the PS4, has already sold over 35.9 million units. During that period we’ve also welcomed the Xbox, with Microsoft recently dropping the Xbox One in recent years – roughly selling a little more than 19.1 units, according to latest information from EA.

They are two forces of the industry that are seemingly unbreakable, like a two-horse race that will never see a challenger. Or at least so we think. With the global video game market valued at $101.62 billion and more platforms and ground-breaking peripherals than ever before, the industry may certainly surprise us.

And then of course there’s 2017, 2018, and beyond. What can we expect from then? Technology is developing at a rapid rate, such a rate that it’s impossible to know where gaming could go from here. If the 1980s was a golden era, what does that make today? Platinum? Either way it’s certainly gone through the levels, yet we’re still far from complete.