Games have always been popular amongst people, going back to when cavemen are said to have invented football many thousands of years ago.
This continued to be the case, especially during the 90’s, when computer-based games consoles started to come about, notably the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Megadrive.
This paved the way for new games consoles with better graphics and more advanced features, which is what we have been left with today.
Up until now, this was all possible without the continued need for an internet connection, but this seems to be set to change within the next year or two, as Microsoft are rumoured to have said that the next Xbox will be virtually inoperable unless constantly plugged into a broadband internet connection.
This would seem to raise the possibility that gamers will avoid buying new consoles for this reason and stick with their old ones, especially people who have limited or even no access to the Internet.
While in today’s world this may seem like an unlikely problem, there are still large parts of this planet that still have no fixed internet access whatsoever, with gaming access being somewhat unreliable over satellite-based connections.
Also, for those people who do decide to buy a future games console, it creates a future risk of inoperability, partly due to the fact that despite it’s huge capacity, the Internet has limitations.
This fact has recently been somewhat demonstrated by the lack of new IP addresses (unique internet connection identifiers) that can now be assigned to connections.
On the positive side, lack of interest in future gaming may result in a boost to the second hand games market, especially for timeless classics that can be played again and again.
Also, if social networking sites are anything to go by, there may be a future time where the demand for games consoles drops by a high amount. This would be due to large amounts of games being played through web browsers rather than physical gaming devices.
The reason that demand for physical consoles is unlikely to drop to zero is due to the fact an increasing amount of games are requiring additional physical controllers in order to be played.
A notable example of this is the Nintendo Wii console, which has game-specific controllers that can be plugged into a console in order to enhance the overall gaming experience.
Overall, it would seem that the future of gaming has a more or less equal amount of both positive and negative points, depending on from which side you consider the subject.