One of the newest art forms, video games, emerged fifty years ago in the 1970s,
and by the next decade had wholly taken over the world. They’ve evolved so much since then,
appearing on computers, home consoles, and mobile phones. But where might we see this
unique medium go in the near future? This is Unveiled, and today we’re
answering the extraordinary question: what will video games in 2050 look like?
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Prior to the 1970s, video games existed on the computers of academics and scientists,
as they were the only people who had the equipment to play them. But that all changed in 1972,
with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, the world’s first home games console. Hot on its
heels was the first true, successful video game arcade cabinet, Atari’s “Pong” – which was so
similar to one of the Odyssey’s titles that it led to a lawsuit that nearly put Atari out
of business. In the years since, the industry has been dominated by several companies. Atari stayed
in the console game until the 1990s, Sega left in the 2000s when the Dreamcast couldn’t hold its own
against the PlayStation 1, and since the launch of the first Xbox, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have
been the major hardware manufacturers. We went from “Pong” through numerous classic arcade games,
many of which are still played today, into the 3D era of the PS1 and N64. And now we’re in a world
of photo-realistic graphics that always seems to be on the cusp of tumbling into total VR.
Indeed, for years, virtual reality has been seen as the ultimate future of video games,
the thing games as a medium are always striving towards: total immersion in a digital world,
mind and body. But VR is not new, and its early iterations were significantly less successful than
early consoles and home computer systems. One of the most infamous forays into VR for the general
consumer was the Power Glove, a worn controller released for the NES in 1989 that had almost no
flagship titles making use of it. It was expensive at the time and barely functional. In the mid 90s,
Nintendo made another disastrous move towards VR with the Virtual Boy, a large headset with
a few issues. There were again minimal titles for it – a trend with VR that continues to this day,
and it could only display games in black and red. Due to fears of motion sickness - a problem
that remains in modern VR - Nintendo eliminated head tracking functionality, reducing immersion.
Nintendo did eventually release the wildly successful Wii, a potential step towards total VR,
but it’s not really the direction the company is going in today.
The Wii did inspire some other technology, however, in its competitors:
the Microsoft Kinect, which was almost a complete flop, and the PlayStation Move.
The controllers of the PS Move were then repurposed for use with PlayStation VR,
Sony’s flagship virtual reality system introduced in 2016 - 10 years after the Wii,
and over 20 years after the Virtual Boy. The PSVR is the most affordable VR device on the market,
although it still cost a hefty $400 at launch - and of course requires a Playstation console.
At the higher end of the spectrum you have the Oculus headsets, acquired by Facebook in 2014,
and Valve’s proprietary HTC VIVE. With the Oculus Quest 2, a standalone headset, the price has come
down considerably. However, some of the best games only work in conjunction with a powerful PC.
In 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the parent company of the social media site Facebook,
which was also called Facebook until then, would be rebranding itself as “Meta”, as he pushed his
“Metaverse” concept, fuelled by the VR technology of the Oculus system. This is Zuckerberg’s vision
for the future, a completely virtual world where people can live their entire lives, have meetings,
and even buy real estate without leaving the comfort of their own homes. It’s likely
inspired by Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel “Snow Crash”, credited by many as popularizing the term
“metaverse”, though “Snow Crash” is a seminal cyberpunk dystopia rather than an aspirational
goal. It’s also, of course, the premise of “The Matrix”, another dystopia the Wachowskis
certainly didn’t want anybody to replicate. So, just how close to reality is the “metaverse”?
Well, there are many obstacles we have to surmount first to get widespread adoption of VR.
First is the price: headsets aren’t cheap, and they require a decent PC or games console,
at least to unlock their full potential. This makes VR prohibitively expensive for
anybody who isn’t already an adherent. VR headsets also just aren’t that comfortable,
despite progress in this area with each successive generation - at least, not compared to say,
a pair of glasses. They need to be strapped on snugly, or the focus begins to blur,
and they can get hot and sweaty underneath. Finally, the biggest problems: headaches,
nausea, and motion sickness. Motion sickness is already an issue in regular video games
as the brain is seeing motion that the body doesn’t experience, and it’s a big problem
that VR manufacturers need to overcome to sell more units. But even if that’s solved,
it can still be difficult for people with visual impairments and poor eyesight to use a headset.
Only time will tell if VR does become widely adopted, but it’s been around since at
least the 90s in the consumer space; other invaluable technologies, like smartphones,
have had much less time and taken off far more significantly for their convenience.
VR is an experience, but unless it becomes more convenient to have it than not, it’s probably
not going to extend beyond the gaming world – and even then, there will always be people who
simply like playing games with controllers, just like we were doing fifty years ago.
But there’s another technology developing in the gaming world,
one more recent that almost certainly will become the future – if it isn’t already:
video game streaming. In the twenty-first century, streaming movies, music, and TV has widely
become the norm, with many major blockbusters seeing simultaneous releases in theaters and
home streaming. Video games are on this same trajectory, with many major companies already
running game streaming services. The most infamous cloud gaming service is undoubtedly Google Stadia,
thanks to its lofty promises and strange financing – but Stadia’s service has improved a lot since
its 2019 launch. Xbox has Project xCloud, Sony has PS Now, and Nvidia has GeForce Now. The
current problem with game streaming is that the infrastructure in most of the world isn’t advanced
enough to support it, but by 2050, that surely won’t be a problem anymore; after all, at the
beginning of the 1990s, it still wasn’t necessary for homes to have an internet connection.
One lesser-known piece of game streaming history is the Satellaview, where some
Satellaview-exclusive “Legend of Zelda” games were broadcast via satellite, in the form of episodes,
to NES systems with an add-on. Many of these games have been lost because they were broadcast
by a satellite, but this was an early form of game streaming pioneered by Nintendo in the late 1990s.
Like today, you needed additional equipment – an NES add-on or a costly,
superfast broadband connection – to stream games effectively. But developing bigger, better,
and more robust internet infrastructure won’t just benefit gamers, this is something that will happen
around the world for everybody within the next few decades, meaning that lengthy download
times for games will be a thing of the past unless you specifically want to play offline.
This isn’t to everyone’s taste, as there’s no small number of people who love physical video
game copies and collecting them as they become increasingly rare in favor of digital sales.
There will likely always be a small market for physical video games, just like there are still
markets for paper books, blu-rays, and vinyl records, but it will surely be edged out of the
mainstream by the convenience of the digital, streaming future. Not everyone is happy to
pay a subscription and have their access to media removed someday, and you can’t really blame them;
sometimes it’s nice to have something in your hands and know you own it, and that it can’t
be taken away by a lapsing membership fee. As technology grows, the options that make life
easier for people are the ones that will become widely adopted; until VR does this, too, it might
not be the “metaverse” future it promises. And that’s what video games in 2050 will look like.
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other
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