It feels as if we’re entering possible one of the most turbulent times in gaming in many a year. The next generation of consoles are on the horizon, of course, but there are also storm clouds gathering around the likes of Google Stadia and Project xCloud. Cloud-based gaming solutions are the future, they yell, while we stare glumly at atrocious upload speeds and download caps.
Local hardware will deliver the better experience
Like it or not though, these things are happening, and publishers are throwing their full weight of force behind such things. There has never been a bigger threat to game ownership than cloud gaming, and gamers will either push back or, as we saw with digital stores, gradually give in and accept their fate.
It’s enormously difficult to predict how it’s all going to turn out, but PC gaming still feels pretty safe among all this. Playing games locally on your own hardware is nearly always going to deliver the better experience, and with the walls being torn down in terms of cross-platform multiplayer and services (look no further than Xbox on PC), PC is well positioned to become the place where you can play any game on any service.
Competition will be fierce
All of this is just in terms of the competition as well. There’s also a whole lot more going on closer to home. Intel is about one year away from entering the graphics card market and ruffling a few feathers. Microsoft, Ubisoft, and EA are beginning to offer myriad subscription options. GOG is promising to offer the PC gaming client to end all clients.
And Epic? Epic’s still throwing mountains of cash at plumping up its turkey known as the Epic Games Store. Who knows, by this point in 2029, the Epic Game Store could be the biggest PC storefront in the world. It makes us shudder a lot to think about it but it’s not beyond reason. Who’d have thought 10 years ago that Banjo would appear in Smash? And who’d have thought 10 years before then that Microsoft could possibly be interested in buying Rare? Things change in this industry, and they can change fast.
PC hardware advances at a breakneck pace
Perhaps the biggest change for PC gaming though will be a technological one. Those who want to stay at the forefront of gaming tech know PC is the place to be the best performance, finest visuals, and groundbreaking graphical technology such as ray-traced lighting. This time 10 years ago we were all using GeForce 9600 GTs and our (ATI!) Radeon HD 4850s. Today we’re using GeForce RTX 2080 Ti’s and Radeon VIIs. That performance leap is ridiculous, so the mind kind of boggles at where we could be in 2029 with those futuristic graphics cards.
So I’m going to throw this one out to you now - what do you think the future of PC gaming will be like? Will PC gaming continue its dominating ascent, could consoles take centre stage once again, or will we all be playing Half-Life 3 on our Samsung Galaxy S20? Peer into your crystal balls and let us know what you think the future holds!
Login or Register to join the debate
PC Specs
Augmented Reality! Where everyone is walking out into traffic even more so than they are with Cellular devices!
"How Paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children".
PC Specs
Imagine Star Citizen, but with Halo. Imagine Halo Universe and Gears universe having cross over events. You can have your single player experiences with expansion game add-ons where different planets, timelines, and states of galatic governing forces become accessable through play. Once graphics get good enough, it will be time to have one persistent universe where Halo and all its history can be shared in a grand design. This is possible now, but with next generation hardware, NPC numbers can flurish into all out war.
PC Specs
now thats a future i can get behind. we can literarly have Ai govern the actions of npc and we the players be the wild cards in these massive situations the true wild west but the cowboy bepop edition Japanese mangas may just get digitaly r
PC Specs
digitally realized. i also think platforms as such will begin to disappear no longer will we have consoles its all just be differently branded dedicated mini PC's
PC Specs
dunno what to expect.. PC will probably stay dominant but unless they find new elements to make transistors out of there won't be such a big change in hardware since we're hitting the end of the silicium crystal (or we already hit it idk) and i dunno how much the cores can be expanded/modified (im not much knowledgeable about cores)
so until that happens i ain't expecting something dramatic
PC Specs
It's the cost, not the size that is becoming the problem. We are far from reaching any size limits.
PC Specs
true 3nm is very much possible but the cost to value ratio seems to be really bad due to potential defects rate. 5nm is most probably gonna be the last silicon used for commercial manufacturing unless they develop some radical new tech that
PC Specs
being said graphene was said to be the savior and allow sub nm manufacturing much easily but i dont think much seems to have happened there so maybe now is when we say thanks to apple and the mobile companies for dropping ABSURD RnD cash in
PC Specs
finding us the solution
PC Specs
If they keep it for longer and sell at higher volume the cost is mitigated, at this point the increased cost of 7nm has been mitigated, TSMC has never even been close to maxing out a new node like they are with 7nm and Nvidia are not even in pre-production of their 7nm GPUs, so yeah the volume is there for sure.
On top of that TSMC's CEO said that 7nm will last much longer.
On top of that TSMC's 5nm will be like their 10nm, just for mobile and if it gets good enough and worth it for bigger die sizes at high clock speeds like desktop CPUs and GPUs then they will use it.
PC Specs
truth be told if the leaked ZEN2 benchmarks are accurate no LN2 cooled stuff then we will see a massive boost in computing power at the lower end of the price spectrum all i can say then is that newer chip designs and INFINITY FABRIC might
PC Specs
be the way to go ahead form there making it truly modular/scale-able @Psychoman what do you think? the revised version of INFINITY FABRIC can be that good or do we need a couple more gen on that as well?
PC Specs
I see noob teammates everywhere.
PC Specs
Simple. Ready Player One. Not as advanced with the Haptics and such but I think a time will come when VR is extremely popular and corps will fight for viewspace.
PC Specs
By then we are looking into a new genre. No longer fps, battle royals, survivals. But what then would be the dominant genre no clue. Simulators? Racing? p*rn?
PC Specs
Player One Will Be Ready This Time
PC Specs
single player decision based storytelling will be king of the hill especially on cloud platforms imagine you want to watch a movie marathon on the weekend instead you and your friends end up playing a game much similar to until dawn. so you
PC Specs
essentially have guys like telltale making a comeback but with all the graphical powers being thrown at it imagine Crysis 7 with full scene based ray tracing and then also add in possibilty of VR /AR HYBRID implementation so yeah you enjoy
PC Specs
the Pirate's of the Caribbean movie? well todays your lucky day as you set sail with Captain Jack Sparrow himself on a journey to loot a BANK so that you have money to buy whiskey at the BAR...why not rob the BAR itself? HOW DARE YOU? and t
PC Specs
then you and your friends find yourself in a ship...sailing but sinking to the underworld to steal posidon's trident to scare the kraken to enter davey jone's locker to get the BLack Pearl so that you can enter the pirate heaven cove and re
PC Specs
return medusa's medalion so that shes free of her curse now she gives you a reward that can buy you an entire kingdom fetch you a fleet of 10,000 Galleons. instead jack trades it for a 2 bottles of whiskey and 1 bottle of rum. why the hell
PC Specs
not? being part of an insane crew that does something as insane and unbelievable like that would be a fun weekend in a VR / AR hybrid VR for the player(s) and AR for the audience as they yell at him her what to do next where to go and whate
PC Specs
whatever eles seems logical to everyone at that time. naughty dog can make some uncharted last of us stories maybe something crazier. rocksteady can make a batman game where you are the detective imagine being in THE DARK KNIGHT SERIES SEQL
PC Specs
REMEDY games can make some insane interactive games imagine Quantum Break, Max Payne or Alan Wake. itll be like A video game + Reaction video crowd behavior at the same time= A TRUE SOCIAL GAME?. The tech for this already exist today in the
PC Specs
form of VR HEADSETS Wireless + higher resolution + faster refresh rates + wider field of view, XBOX KINECT for motion sensing so your actions are accurately captured and translated into game no awkward how do i reload this gun issue **** i
PC Specs
**** i droped it. AUGMENTED reality so that the audience isnt looking at the TV SCREEN to look at whats happening but simply look at you and see the digital world you are interacting with. MARIO CART, NFS, SIM RACING and Multiplayer games
PC Specs
will definitly be a big hit but i really belive such storied based games will be the next king of gaming due to its mass market appeal as opposed to niche genres. netlfix of games will be a service that has 100s of games like that to offer
PC Specs
more the same, the games will be ahead of the graphic cards about 55fps and bordering on annoyingly close but still behind in max settings.
PC Specs
dick/vagina simulator
PC Specs
A dark future: Where all developers go GaaS all the way, even paying half of a full priced AAA just to play the alpha/beta. And mobile gaming is in ESL.
A bright future: Developers revert to the traditional way of releasing polished and complete games and offer demos to test your performance. Ray Tracing will be a standard in graphics.
PC Specs
In 10 years, I expect local hardware and cloud gaming to be in fierce battle. But I doubt there will be clear winner, due to people who like ownership of their things, enthusiasts and overall competitive players. Storefront wise, I expect Epic to kind of settle in good marketshare, but I expect them to fail to overthrow Steam, because they aren't doing enough for customer and it will hurt them,...
PC Specs
... at least in the long run. But I do see breakup of monopolic marketplace Steam created. Though I root for GOG, I am not certain how much they will grow. And I think we will see some great results of CPU war between Intel and AMD. Potentially even AMD shifting some more focus on graphic cards, if Intel won't be striking back hard enough. I also expect Intel to do well with graphic cards,...
PC Specs
... if they stick around for that long, as drivers mature and so on. Also I expect we might see rise of more budget friendly VR. I think that should get further out of being bit niche.
PC Specs
It'll be the same as 10 years earlier. The only difference that might be if VR is successful to SAO part. Probably intel will be on top of the GPU market, who knows. Was it intel that made new GPU or other company?
PC Specs
I dont know for u but my PC in 10 years won't be able to run games at all.
PC Specs
Sh*t games with amazing graphics. If continues this way, developers will make games just for money not for the gamers. Today almost every game is
PC Specs
over $100 with microtransactions and stuff like that. games will demand over 4 or 6 GB gpus on lowest settings. they care only for money and it will ruin gaming
PC Specs
It's really hard to say, it can go multiple ways. Either "games as a service" become really big, and ruins normal gaming as a whole, or developers will finally realize that in the long end releasing a fully finished game for one price, will be better for them.
More cloud based gaming?
Will VR be mainstream?
will an average person even be able to afford PC gaming? 5 years ago a top end 780 TI costed 700$, now a 2080 TI costs 1200$, that's more than inflation...
PC Specs
Find out on the next episode of Dragon Ball Z
PC Specs
Games will undoubtedly look better and be even more cinematic. The golden age will pass and with it bring a less enticing era of gaming, its halfway there already with a full game (inc dlc) being well over £100, greedy publishers will wreck the industry. Will cloud streaming becoming the only way? If so then im out.
PC Specs
I think that the 100$ per game cost is great, as long as they give us the entire game with all it's content and NO more charges, instead of spliting up the community and many game's DLCs or the extra money above 60$ are NOT worth it as they are some items, skins and such, it's worth when there are extra levels, extra story on top of the new items, characters and skins.
Games have grown to be mega expensive compared to 10 years ago and the volume sold has hit the limits long ago as well, so they have to increase the price, but without all the micro-transactions, loot boxes and chopping up the game into 100x pieces and such. Just one complete product.
PC Specs
Prettier. Yes, prettier.
Considering we barely see any new mechanics in gaming nowadays, all we see are diferent stories with better graphics (not complaining) and probably most good developers will perfect the already existing mechanics
PC Specs
If you ask me we see simpler, more shallow and less mechanics with each sequel for most games and games and genres that used to have depth are now waterdown shadows of their former self, be it through sequels or just new IPs.
PC Specs
It will probably be very divided:
I personally believe the first category will still be much more popular though. Exclusivity will be rampant though. Epic Games proves devs are easily paid off and most of them give zero s*it to customer choice.
PC Specs
2029: Intel will release its first 14nm++++++++++ cpu for 2500$
PC Specs
maybe like "Player One Ready" movie
PC Specs
That could be fun! VR is already exciting, and i can't wait for it to become a complete virtual world. Although i'm sure that will also bring downsides, i can easily see more people using it as an escape from reality, instead of just playing a game.
Also, it's Ready Player One ;)
PC Specs
Considering the game in the film allows people to blow their mortgages on upgrades in an attempt to obtain an artifact it would probably be published by EA :)