Gaming has changed drastically in the last ten years, and recent events in the industry do not allow for an optimistic view of the situation.
Things have always changed quickly in the world of video games. Each decade brought with it new trends and challenges. Graphics developed quickly, new genres appeared… However, I have the impression that gaming has never changed as much as it has in the last ten years. This may sound funny when you consider the fact that people are playing Minecraft, GTA 5, League of Legends and Overwatch today – just like they were in 2016. But globally, there is no way that anyone ten years ago could have predicted what was coming. Our reality from 2026 would simply sound unimaginable to us in 2016 – maybe even like some kind of bad joke.
To give you a better idea of what I mean, I put together a fictitious scenario in which I travel through time and tell myself in 2016 what the gaming world will look like in 2026. One of my dumber ideas for a text, I agree, but actually incomparable to the stupidity of the state the gaming industry is currently in.
First, let’s set the scene: it’s summer 2016, Uncharted 4, Overwatch, Doom, Dark Souls 3, and The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine have just been released. Consoles cost under 400 euros, the first VR headsets are coming, and in the world of PCs, the GTX 1000 series has just been launched. We are not even aware of how good this period is for gaming and how much better it will be before it gets ugly. Just to repeat for dramatic emphasis – it was only 10 years ago!
A few months ago, HCL launched the biggest redesign of the portal, I’m finishing college and I know what I want to do. And then one hot summer night, I make contact from the future in my dream. I’m talking to myself, just a 10-year-old version. I say you should protect your back as much as possible, you’re in for a nasty sciatica. But let it go, I say to myself – what is the gaming world like in 2026 and what will happen in the next decade?
“And what exactly are you interested in?” – asks Zoran from 2026.
– Will No Man’s Sky be trash or not?
It will be both. Upon its release, it will be the most hated game on the Internet, and then in ten years it will receive free add-ons and become one of the best-selling and best-received survival games ever.
– Will Cyberpunk 2077 be the game of the decade?
No, it will be pulled from sale on consoles after release and it will take three years before it becomes the game they announced. CD Projekt will announce an expansion for Witcher 3 even ten years later.
– Crazy and unforgettable! And what about GTA 6 and The Elder Scrolls 6, what kind of games will they be?
You won’t be playing that for the next ten years. But that’s why there will be new versions of GTA 5 and Skyrim for PS5 and XS.
– Pitch! What about Nintendo, have they finally capitulated with the Wii U and started putting their games on other people’s consoles?
They didn’t, Nintendo wins in the end in the last generation of consoles. They flirt a bit with bringing their franchises to mobile phones, but ultimately they remain the last bastion of exclusivity in gaming. Xbox eventually moves all of its franchises to PlayStation, and PlayStation brings its games to PC, so both end up changing their minds about exclusivity.
– Wait, Halo on PlayStation, Uncharted on PC? Nintendo has the best selling console? Don’t give me away… And what about VR gaming, surely VR headsets have the most immersive games in the future?
It failed. The best-selling VR headset is Facebook’s, and although the new Half-Life is the flagship VR exclusive, a decade later nobody cares about VR anymore.
– So Half-Life 3 is finally out, but as a VR title? Bokte! And what about Beyond Good and Evil 2?
It’s not Half-Life 3 or a continuation of the story, and Beyond Good and Evil 2 was finally revealed in 2017 and then fell into oblivion for the next nine years.
– I can’t believe it! And which games are popular? The battle between PES and FIFA games is certainly still going on.
There is no more PES or FIFA, now it’s eFootball and EA Sports FC. Call of Duty still comes out every year, but Battlefield manages to crush it twice in the space of nine years. In a few days, the Pokemon GO craze will start, but it will pass. Fortnite and PUBG and Warzone will appear, they will become the most popular multiplayer games in the world, for a while. But by 2025, they’ll all be overrun by Roblox.
– Okay, I’m not interested in multiplayer, I’m asking what’s popular from single-player.
Soon you will see announcements for The Last of Us 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2, both games will leave a big mark on gaming, but in different ways. Red Dead 2 will be universally loved and become the third best-selling game of all time, while The Last of Us 2 will draw a lot of ire.
– Well, then big games are still coming in the future.
You’ll find remasters and remakes of almost all the games you’ve ever asked for. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro trilogies, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Metal Gear Solid 3, MediEvil, Resident Evil 2 – all will get great modernizations.
– Oh, great! I can’t wait.
But they will go overboard with remasters and remakes. On the PlayStation 5, for the first few years you will mostly play remasters from the PlayStation 4.
– Okay, but surely Sony is preparing epic single-player adventures to remember.
There will be good games for the PlayStation 4 until 2020, but then Sony will devote 60% of its resources to multiplayer projects and lose a huge amount of money along the way. They will also be the first to raise the price of their games to €80.
– What?! That’s a terrible business plan, who came up with that terrible idea in the first place? Is at least Xbox using that situation to get back in shape?
Xbox is doing worse than ever until 2026. They immediately put all their games on subscription and people welcome it while the subscription is cheap, but later they raise it to the heavens and shoot themselves in the foot.
– I can understand that, Xbox only has Halo, Gears and Forza anyway. You also said that they would transfer it to PlayStation.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is buying Bethesda, Activision Blizzard, and a bunch of other studios, so they own Call of Duty, Fallout, Warcraft, and a bunch of other franchises.
– Wait, what? And with so many popular franchises they are still last in the race!? So what happened, didn’t Google and Amazon dominate gaming, or God forbid Facebook?
Google pompously entered the world of gaming with the streaming platform Stadia, only to shut it down a few years later. Amazon doesn’t know whether to pee or not with gaming. Facebook has a metaverse idea that they burned about $80 billion on without ultimately achieving anything with it.
– Wow. But it is not clear to me – everyone is in some losses. So is it possible that Nintendo is the only one that is profitable? Probably because of the portable consoles, there’s no way they’re coming back with a home console after the Wii U.
Nintendo no longer makes portable consoles but hybrids. One is on its way to becoming the best selling console of all time and the other has become the fastest selling console of all time.
– Please!? What happened there?
Ninendo has critically acclaimed games and the cheapest consoles on the market.
– Okay, how cheap can they be? There is no way they are under 200 euros?
It’s not how cheap Nintendo consoles are, it’s how expensive others are. The PlayStation 5 costs 600 euros, and the Xbox Series is now at 700 or so. And these are the prices six years later. Year after year, the prices of that old hardware go up, instead of going down.
– Kru’te mazo! So are people only able to try these consoles at E3 and Infogamer?
You don’t have E3 or Infogamer anymore, everything has failed.
– Oh, all kinds of things! So PC gaming has conquered everything then?
The PC first goes through a crypto crisis, which makes the graphics more expensive by some 300% and there are hardly any on sale, and just when it calms down, the AI fever occurs, which makes the memory more expensive by 300% and PC gaming is practically unprofitable in 2026.
– It’s a duck! So in the next ten years there will be no GTA 6 or TES 6, everything is record expensive and everyone is making losses, fairs are no longer held, Roblox is the most popular gaming platform… So what kind of future is that?! Can it be worse than that?
It’s just a fraction. The plan is to introduce age confirmation for using online services. Soon the games will no longer be released on discs. All local video game magazines have shut down. Online game stores are suffocating in garbage. Content in video games is starting to be generated by AI tools. Various groups try to ban the sale of games they don’t like.
– Well, horror!
In a few years, you will play a game that will become your favorite game ever, but the studio behind it will soon fall apart, and that will be hard on you. You’ll have good gaming hardware, but almost every game on Unreal Engine 5 will annoy you with its stuttering. The series you used to love to discuss will become a toxic hotbed of bickering that will make you wonder if you need it in your life.
– Well, I’m already wondering if I need a job related to gaming if the next 10 years will be like that. I’d better go to the ceramic shop!
But you won’t. Your knees aren’t really your strong point either. As much as you are bitten by the negativity of the gaming industry, you are just as interested in what will follow ten years after that. You can’t help it – your cat-like curiosity will kill you.
– Come on, I’ve had enough of this nightmare!
No problem, see you in ten years in the next one!