We're already seeing signs that the future of gaming is evolving into a more sophisticated niche because the gamers themselves are demanding higher quality and more content. This is also compounded by the internet, where game reviews are readily available and players can immediately judge if a game will be worth their hard earned money. The internet and it's wide open resources are forcing game companies to become more honest, and offer up an experience that will grab your attention away from other games. A combination of easily accessible press, reviews, peer-to-peer (word of mouth) interfacing on game forums, and stiff competition has made our games reach a tipping point... where games are no longer a gamble to buy and the low end games will quickly be flushed out and ignored.

In the past, the only information you had on a game was the box itself. The cover art and the bullet points on the back, the screen shots, were all that you could know. It wasn't much to make an acurate judgement if a game would be worth the money. Later on, you would find out if a kid in your neighborhood got a certain game, and word-of-mouth would eventually leak more information about the game. As time went on, video game magazines hit the shelves and were the central source of news and info on games and how well they are. It also becaming a driving-force of advertisement and awareness of upcoming games, creating hype and anticipation of future games. Before the magazine, a game would just show up on the shelves without any fanfare.

Thankfully, the internet has replaced the magazine, giving us gamers instant access to the information we want on a game... past or present. We can decide immediately based off our impressions from game play footage, previews, reviews, game forums, etc... This allows us to weed out the bad games, or the ones we aren't interested, based on the game itself... not on the box art, or the pictures on the back, or the personal prefences of the neighbor kid who likes/dislikes the game. Today, the game is judged soley on the merits of the game itself, not anything superficial. This means, game companies know they can no longer get away with selling mediocre games at inflated prices. Just recently, cartridge based games on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis ran incredibly high. "Street Fighter 2" on the Super Nintendo sold for $79 ... and that's 1991 dollars. "Phantasy Star 4" cost a whopping $99 dollars. To think that we complain now about paying $59 for Modern Warfare 2. Be glad you weren't a gamer back in the early 90s!

This leads me to another point. Due to this tremendous amount of trancparency between games and gamers, studios must create higher-quality games to impress reviewers and gamers themselves. They do this by spending more time on development... coming up with creative ideas, interesting characters, an awesome backstory, cool graphics, neat new features, leaderboards, multi-player, achievements, etc... The cost of these games begin to have larger budgets due to the time and effort it takes to create all these features that have become "standard" by now. In addition, the total length of games also increases. A game that doesn't even clock in at 10 hours is chided. Unless it's something as spectacular as "Modern Warfare 2," that is.

As gamers spend more time playing a single game, the studio wants you to keep playing their game. So they'll release expansion packs, updates, patches, bug fixes, new levels, new weapons. Game companies know it's a tremendous amount of effort to get John Smith Gamer to go the store, spend $59 on their game instead of all the alternative games. They want you to keep spending money on their game, not other people's games. So they release new content. Makes sense, and it's the smart thing to do.

This is going to evolve even further.

In the future, I think gamers will have become so sophisticated, that they'll only be playing 5 or 6 six major games per year. However, those 5 or 6 games will be constantly be updated with new features that'll keep that player hooked. We're already seeing trends in the sales to show that industry as a whole is making more and more money each year. That's because more and more people are buying games. However, more and more studios close their doors. That's because people are buying more games, but only a particular select few of games. Everyone is buying the same game. Halo, Grand Theft Auto,Team Fortress, Metal Gear, Call of Duty, Fallout. Etc... Soon, the days of smaller companies who peddle shoddy games like "My Little Pony Ride" or whatever won't find a single person who's willing to pay or even play their games. Smaller companies will persist, but only the ones with innovative IPs and unique gameplay. Smaller companies will be forced to come up with intriguing new titles, that are original enough to stand out in the crowd. The era of awesome games, all the time, will be the wave of the future.