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wraggster
August 19th, 2012, 21:35
Recently we’ve been hearing a lot of rumors about new consoles being released: a new Xbox, a new Playstation, a Valve console, but none of them have been confirmed yet.
Still, we can outline how the gaming industry will look like in a few years.


First of all, mobile consoles are failing. Hardcore gamers are the ones keeping the industry alive these days, but I don’t think any hardcore gamer would play 8 hours straight on a 5″ screen (especially if there are only casual games for that console…).

Sure, the PSVita and the 3DS have nice hardware, and they’re surely innovative, but a double touch screen or a 3D camera may impress developers or casual gamers, but those features are barely used, and a true gamer only needs a keyboard and a mouse.

What does that mean? Mobile gaming will disappear? No it won’t. Smartphones are the way, smartphone games were probably the most successful casual games in the last years, just look at Angry Birds.

The reason why those games are so successful is because you can play it wherever you go, no need to carry a console with you. No matter how small and light that console is, it still takes space, and you always carry your phone anyway.

Also, if you watched E3, you may have noticed that even Sony isn’t very convinced about how the Vita is turning out…

The OUYA received 8,596,475 dollars on kickstarter, which makes me feel positive about this console. I’m not sure how this will turn out, it has a lot of potential, but is the industry ready for an open source console?

The only thing this console needs is support from big software houses, because, again, a console can’t just rely on casual games.
But anyway I’m going to get one: it’s cheap, it has nice hardware, and it runs android; even without hardcore games, it can make an awesome device.

Blizzard, Valve, Notch and many others criticized Windows 8 recently, and Valve is FINALLY porting Steam and L4D2 (Left For Dead 2, in case you don’t know) to Linux, and from their first tests, they confirmed what we always knew: everything runs better on Linux.

The Linux port of L4D2 has better performances than the Windows version, according to them.
I’m very excited about this, a few years ago even gaming on OSX was impossible, now seems like we, Linux users, are finally getting some love from software houses.

So what do you think? Will you get an OUYA too? And are you as excited as me about Steam for Linux?

- Freddy

http://wololo.net/2012/08/17/the-future-of-gaming/