BTW, didn't mean for this to get so long. Just kinda ended up that way.

Everyone here is posting great stuff. I thought I'd go a bit to the dark side. I think we're going to see publishers and console manufacturers slowly try to get rid of the concept of game ownership. You saw Microsoft try to do it early on with the Xbox One games, and everyone rebelled, forcing them to undo all their limitations. But the industry is still moving steadily towards that outcome. Sony's push toward it is much more subtle with Playstation Now, focusing first on older titles. Soon you'll see titles simultaneously launch on store shelves and Playstation Now. Then you'll get your first Playstation Now exclusive, perhaps starting with Indie titles that won't cause much outcry. But as Playstation Now's userbase grows and begins to rise to physical copy levels, major games will become exclusive to Playstation Now too.

There's a huge incentive for console manufacturers to get rid of physical copies. They can give up the expensive practices of manufacturing game disks and the logistics of shipping. Not to mention get rid of the used gaming market to boot. A market that console manufacturers have always disliked for not getting a cut. For good reason in my book, I believe once you buy a physical game, it becomes your property that they shouldn't have a hand in.

But an even bigger plus for them is increased revenue, when all your games are behind a monthly pay wall, everyone will end up paying more for games as a whole. There are people that are regular game buyers who preorder and buy new games every month, but those people are really a minority. The much more common group of people end up buying a few games a year, if that. There's actually a number we can find to illustrate this, the tie-ratio also called the attach-rate. But basically it's how many games people buy per person on average for each console. Here's a source to find tie rates. Current gen isn't listed yet.

Lets take the PS3 data and do some math. The current lifespan tie-ratio for the PS3 is 12.76. Altogether using a $60 game price, people on average spent $765.6 in total for games for the market life of the PS3. Seems pretty good but here's the telling thing, the market life of the PS3 until the PS4 was around 7 years! That means that people on average only bought 1.82 games a year! Remember this is before the price of manufacturing and shipping the game is factored in. But now lets see how this works with Playstation Now as the leading model for getting games. Assuming the PS4 has a similar lifespan, 7 years, lets multiply that with the number of months, 12, and the monthly price of Now, $20. That comes out to people paying $1680 on average for the lifetime of their device. Remember this is on top of the console price too. A significant jump up from $765.6, which itself is a bit inflated since it doesn't account for costs and games that are less than $60. So you can see there's a significant motive for console makers to move to a subscription model like this.

I could go into this in more detail but I'll stop now because it's already getting a bit too long. But what will ultimately prove whether this happens or not is if gamers go for it. How do you feel about game ownership in the future?

Dependent on technology, I think the future is VR, we are just dipping our toes into the pond currently, but Morpheus and Oculus are just gateways, I think MMORPGs are going to become more of a thing than they are with VR headsets and DLC won't be as big of a thing anymore, but it'll be more of a subscription based model, less story driven games and more open worlds where you create your own story either alone or with other people. You'll have different genres of MMOs, but as technology advances you'll feel more immersed, hopefully to the point where you don't need 2 screens infront of your face, but you just close your eyes and neurally link into the game, if you watch anime think Log Horizon or Sword Art Online.

Call me an optimist but I think we might actually start transitioning away from the force fed DLC scheme that has been prevalent. The positive response to games like Witcher 3, which from release has had amazing support from the developers, weekly free dlc, and upcoming expansions that, when totaled, are rumored to rival the amount of content in their second game (http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/07/10/the-wi...-3-expansion-almost-the-size-of-the-witcher-2). 343 announced at e3 that all DLC map packs will be free to ensure a cohesive community (likely also as an attempt to repair their image following MCC). They also unveiled an alternative revenue stream that seems to be very balanced and completely optional.

Also, if you look at what Microsoft is doing with the Xbox One, I think we're really starting to see "gaming ecosystems". The lines are getting a little blurry, so that when you play on xbox, you might not even have to be playing on an xbox (sort of already the case with windows 10 streaming). That's all conjecture though, but I think we'll get a clearer picture in the next year or so.

Annualized games will slowly disappear in exchange for a universal platform: We're seeing this now with Call of Duty taking a hiatus after Black Ops III, GTA had a short spree of annualized games with GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas; and now I think Assassins Creed is the next to slow down the releases. Companies are realizing that too much of one thing gets stale. Call of Duty has fantastic gunplay, but seeing the same franchise every year fatigues the customer. After awhile, annualized games are going to go away for platform-approaches. Instead of buying FIFA every year, you can buy the FIFA platform, then buy smaller updates throughout the year that include new rosters, fields, and entire game patches. it would be similar to what World of Warcraft has with its Vanilla game, and expansions that add new features.

I think the console gen after the current one will be the last one. I don't know of many people over 10 who have one, it's all pic and mods are getting to be the selling point of many games.

We really seem to be entering into an age of indie devs. Small independent studios are creating the more risky and interesting games that larger studios don't feel are safe enough to invest in. As much as I dislike it, buying into early access to be an alpha tester is here to stay. It's to much of a money maker to ignore. Even larger companies are getting into it. The new Lego building game is even doing it. DLC is going to get more and more ridiculous. To think we laughed at horse armor. Lastly VR is hard for me to gauge. We've been promised it so many times before that I'm skeptical it'll take hold this time.

I'm still waiting for mobile gaming to prove itself to me. I haven't seen a big game that doesn't use time-gating and micro-transactions. The only things that seem to come close are the Final Fantasy ports. There's potential, but right now the standard seems to be Free-to-play or $.99 with micro-transactions. (If anyone has any suggestions to prove otherwise, please send them my way.)

It also doesn't help that smartphone hardware specs vary wildly. I remember downloading Crazy Taxi: City Rush onto my Gen 1 Moto X, only for the developer to pull support of that device. If a developer did that with a major gaming platform (Like Arkham Knight) there would be a huge uproar.

As for VR, I wasn't sure, but then I played Elite Dangerous at PAX East last year. I had an "AHAH" moment. I'm locked in a space dogfight, and my bogey zooms right by me and I lose sight of him. My typical gaming reflexes kick in, and I try to find him by turning my whole ship around. I then realized that I could just look up and out the back of the cockpit. The realization was pretty exhilarating.

Now, I don't think that all gaming should switch to VR, but between that Minecraft Hololens demo and my Elite Dangerous experience, I'm pretty excited.

Ok this post may upset some of you, i sincerely hope not.

I started gaming at the age of the genesis or the mega drive depending on which side of the Atlantic Ocean you are in, i have owned throughout the years, several game consoles from the genesis to the most recent PS4, so i have seen this gaming landscape change, but not for the good, ok i mean yeah for the good until like the ps2 age what gen was that? 6th gen? from that gen on while in the ps2 era great games were still coming out, the gaming industry was transforming at a rapid pace, and transforming in a bad way if i may add.

Back then you had games, you had amazing games, the industry was changing but that didn't affect games at least for another 5 to 6 years, and great games were coming out, games that were finished and extensively tested for example, games that were fun, and were not always the same, back in that era I had a lot of fun with my ps2 and with my xbox, the xbox was an amazing machine no doubt, and the homebrew on that thing was glorious :)

fast forward 5 or 6 years, thousand of studios and publishers disappeared because big publishers were absorbing everything like an angry monster, consoles with an internet connection were becoming a thing, and all this unfortunately would be a problem in the near future.

The xbox was released and the ps3 was releaesed, and cocky sony was at work, here lets price our machine at 600 or 700 dollars why not, we made the best console till date with the ps2 why not rip consumers off now? And after this they went downhill only really picking up around 2010, while the xbox maintained its steady growth, and Nintendo and it's wii took the gaming industry by storm.

But over here we started seeing the shady tactics happening, DLC, pay to win, disc dlc, unfinished games, broken games, false promisses, awful hardware, before this 7th gen hit the stores no one has ever seen such a big amount of hardware failures, the only console that was immune to this was really the wii, the first hardware reviews of the ps3 and mainly the xbox were pure hardware nightmares, more than 60% of failure rates in the first two years for the xbox360, and it wasn't much better on the ps3 side, all the changes in technology the last few 6 or 7 years culminated in bad hardware, worst software, bigger profits for publishers and those same publishers ripping people off still.

It was mostly this until this gen started, and oh god it started in a bad way, what Microsoft wanted to do with the Xbox One was the worst consumer rape of all time, a console that had to be connected to the internet 24/7 to even work, what kind of shady tactic is this? wanted to play a single player game? connect it to the internet! want to listen to music? connect it to the internet, what kind of DRM is this? want to take your console to a place that has no internet? you can't play anything! and this is the best, in 6 or 7 years when a new gen of consoles comes out when they shut down the server for the xbox one, your console would be a brick! it would not work anymore ever!!!! of course people didn't initially see through this, but a revolt on gaming sites and the worst E3 of all time for microsoft, where sony actually made fun of their draconian sharing system, and the ratio of pre-orders of ps4 to xbox-one of like 10-1, Microsoft went silent for two weeks and two weeks later they announced they would give up on all those plans and just create a normal console, this was the first ...

Ok this post may upset some of you, i sincerely hope not.

I started gaming at the age of the genesis or the mega drive depending on which side of the Atlantic Ocean you are in, i have owned throughout the years, several game consoles from the genesis to the most recent PS4, so i have seen this gaming landscape change, but not for the good, ok i mean yeah for the good until like the ps2 age what gen was that? 6th gen? from that gen on while in the ps2 era great games were still coming out, the gaming industry was transforming at a rapid pace, and transforming in a bad way if i may add.

Back then you had games, you had amazing games, the industry was changing but that didn't affect games at least for another 5 to 6 years, and great games were coming out, games that were finished and extensively tested for example, games that were fun, and were not always the same, back in that era I had a lot of fun with my ps2 and with my xbox, the xbox was an amazing machine no doubt, and the homebrew on that thing was glorious :)

fast forward 5 or 6 years, thousand of studios and publishers disappeared because big publishers were absorbing everything like an angry monster, consoles with an internet connection were becoming a thing, and all this unfortunately would be a problem in the near future.

The xbox was released and the ps3 was releaesed, and cocky sony was at work, here lets price our machine at 600 or 700 dollars why not, we made the best console till date with the ps2 why not rip consumers off now? And after this they went downhill only really picking up around 2010, while the xbox maintained its steady growth, and Nintendo and it's wii took the gaming industry by storm.

But over here we started seeing the shady tactics happening, DLC, pay to win, disc dlc, unfinished games, broken games, false promisses, awful hardware, before this 7th gen hit the stores no one has ever seen such a big amount of hardware failures, the only console that was immune to this was really the wii, the first hardware reviews of the ps3 and mainly the xbox were pure hardware nightmares, more than 60% of failure rates in the first two years for the xbox360, and it wasn't much better on the ps3 side, all the changes in technology the last few 6 or 7 years culminated in bad hardware, worst software, bigger profits for publishers and those same publishers ripping people off still.

It was mostly this until this gen started, and oh god it started in a bad way, what Microsoft wanted to do with the Xbox One was the worst consumer rape of all time, a console that had to be connected to the internet 24/7 to even work, what kind of shady tactic is this? wanted to play a single player game? connect it to the internet! want to listen to music? connect it to the internet, what kind of DRM is this? want to take your console to a place that has no internet? you can't play anything! and this is the best, in 6 or 7 years when a new gen of consoles comes out when they shut down the server for the xbox one, your console would be a brick! it would not work anymore ever!!!! of course people didn't initially see through this, but a revolt on gaming sites and the worst E3 of all time for microsoft, where sony actually made fun of their draconian sharing system, and the ratio of pre-orders of ps4 to xbox-one of like 10-1, Microsoft went silent for two weeks and two weeks later they announced they would give up on all those plans and just create a normal console, this was the first meltdown of this gen, Sony acted like the good guy, but hey guys, don't think they wouldn't do the same, Sony would do exactly this, but they got scared because of the reaction people showed to the xbox, so they went back on their decision, as for the flaws of last gen, they continue to exist, pay to win, DLC, meaningless DLC, and unfinished games still exist, the bad hardware though seems to be gone, which is a good thing.

About the future, to be honest i belive this is the last console gen that we will own games, next gen games will be streamed from the company servers, also Sony will not make a ps5 i am sure, gaming will be on their Bravia Tvs, and this will make sense since games will be streamed there won't be a need for a very good hardware, a tv+streaming will be the next thing for gaming, as for microsoft i don't know what they will do, probably something similar, and since the Xbox one isn't doing particularly well and there were talks that microsoft would kill the xbox brand, i really have no idea what will happen, as for nintendo, it is really hard to predict what they are going to do.

In the end we will have more broken games no more consoles no more fisical games no more games on the console itself, gaming will be a service, then gaming will decline again, people will stop playing games and buying games, then the industry will wonder what did they do wrong, in time probably they will be back to its roots and make fisical games etc etc, but that would be in a long long future.

Anyways that's my wall of text, but i am just disapointed on how the industry works now so, this is what i see happening in the future, god forbid it may be worst than what i expect.

I see it stuck behind more and more paywalls, where you must pay extra for every bit of content.

As long as it goes in a direction where I can put my mind into the body of Hatsune Miku, I'm not complaining.

The gaming industry is finally coming into its own. More players are entering the market and more systems are being developed to deliver content than at any time before - not to mention the content itself. As excited as I am to see where the industry ends up in 10 years, I am worried about the effects of capitalism. We are enjoying a period of relative dev "freedom," and I hope that developers of all sizes are allowed to continue to pursue new ideas and create original games without the influence of some yet unseen "regulatory practice."