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There Is No Ninth Generation

I: Reflection.

Sometime around age 14 or 15, musing on the future of gaming, I wrote the following:

The next-generation systems (the replacements for GameCube, Xbox, and PS2) will roll out sometime around the year 2006. This will either continue the rise of video games, or begin the path towards their inevitable decline. Having us stare at a TV screen for hours on end will not keep the industry going. They must evolve to changing technology and, well… boredom.

I feel I was both prescient and incorrect here. (Albeit mostly vague.) Nintendo, as is their wont, did revolutionize gaming anew with the introduction of motion controls with the Wii, copied by PlayStation’s MOVE and SixAxis controllers. Microsoft introduced the Kinect in fits and starts. Technology did change, and changed gaming.

—but to what extent? Microsoft backpedaled utterly away from their promise to make the Kinect central to the Xbox One experience. The early promise of the Wii U GamePad (see: Nintendo Land) was squandered amid dreadful sales. The biggest games of the Nintendo 3DS (Pokémon Sun & Moon) don’t even bother to utilize the portable’s central 3D gimmick. And now we’re looking at 2.0 follow-ups to the One and PS4 that honestly don’t look all that different in form or function from the Xbox and PS2 I was contemplating in my mid-teens. (By which I mean, the gameplay is still essentially the same, with updated graphics. The overall user experience, I’ll concede, has shifted significantly with the rise of internet connectivity, streaming, and social.)

II: Innovation!

I still think, as ever, that innovation is central to the continued success of gaming. In this vein, two themes emerge: A) I worry about the industry as a whole, bloated with massive financial success and therefore afraid to take risks; B) I am more glad than ever to have Nintendo.

A) The gaming industry has never been easy to break into, but wow—gone are the days in which a massive company like Microsoft would step up to launch a new system from scratch. And the notion of any individual games company like Sega being able to rise from scrappy underdog to massive presence as they did throughout the nineties? A joke. For the most part, we’re stuck with what he have. (And on the software side, AAA developers release open world after open world, bungled with bugs, on an annual schedule like a Hollywood blockbuster studio. Is it sustainable?)

B) Thankfully, we have the Nintendo Switch. While I’m for sure a Nintendo fangirl, any historian of the gaming world has to acknowledge the company’s drive for innovation and how much it has shaped every aspect of the controllers we use & the gameplay we experience. I don’t want to get bogged down in this broader post with a lot of musing about the Switch, but it excites me to see Nintendo pushing forward in blending home and mobile gaming, while still delivering new features in the how of gameplay with the amazingly crafted Joy-Cons. This is the kind of new shit that compels me to purchase a console!

The overly dramatic title of this post is in fact in reference to Windows OS. After the messiness of Windows 8, Microsoft opted to skip right over 9 and debut their “final” OS, Windows 10. From this point onward, they claim, it’s just upgrades to the same basic framework. I wonder if home consoles have perhaps reached this point? Rumors abound about how the Switch might be upgraded via a new tablet or dock every few years, and of course the controllers themselves are modular as well. Microsoft and Sony have already made clear that they see their forays into 4K as upgrades to their existing lineups, and not wholly new tech. What major leap left could consoles take from here?

III: Disruption?

To return to my teenaged self:

You see, video game consoles are going to change very rapidly, it would seem. Not too far in the future… a virtual reality Zelda? Yeah, where you run on a treadmill to move across Hyrule, and by the time you get to an enemy, you’re too tired to swing your 3D sword peripheral! Great idea! Or how about, hmm… oh yeah, and when you swim, you get to wave you hands in the air, and make a fool of yourself!

OK, so maybe there won’t be a virtual reality Zelda any time soon, or at least we pray that there won’t be one. It would be nice, though, if you could have something like that X-men person… umm… Cyclops’ (?) glasses, where, in order to look around, you would have to physically turn your head! While still using a controller, for old time’s sake.

Yes, VR. Longed for since the days of the Virtual Boy, and now finally here. The sword peripheral came first, with Skyward Sword and Wii MotionPlus. Kinect’s truly impressive tech can detect arms swimming through the air (and the Switch’s right Joy-Con will have a similar, smaller feature.) The Wii U GamePad can be swiveled around to reveal hidden elements of a virtual world surrounding you. And now, Oculus Rift puts two fancy, immersive controllers in your hands while you’re strapped into a headset that engulfs your existence.

Even as the basics of console’s couch gaming have remained the same for decades, improvements in interactivity have swirled around our sofas, leading us to this point. Will VR truly present a major shift in gaming? Will Oculus (or another VR company) become a major force in the industry if it does—or will the Big Three stay the same, as Nintendo teases VR for the future of Switch and Sony already has PlayStation VR on the market? Is this all so much hot air?!

I didn’t know at age 15, and I sure as shit don’t know now. But the hype train is rolling, and I’m fully on board!

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