After a quiet period of time due to there being not much news about, I find myself being given a breath of life as three new topics are springing to my crazy brain...an article about the impact of games on society will be coming soon (although I swear it will be quite short as its well trodden ground, I know) due to an article I read about Indonesia (stick with me here) and also an article on Wi-Max and its potential impact on gaming in the future.

For now though I want you all to consider this subject..gaming evolution and the most likely immediate future scenarios. Why? I was thinking on the way home from work (which is exactly what this blog is designed to make you do on the way home from work) about the fact that so often we talk about what the future of gaming holds, virtual reality, super computers being the central hub of the home entertainment medium etc.. but in reality what can we expect over the next 5, 10, 15 or 20 years? How far has gaming come over the years? What is the next gen machine going to consist of?

In the early to mid 70's we had the likes of the Fairchild Channel F and the Atari 2600, simply they were consoles that attached to your TV and you placed cartridges into them and played games. Fast forward to the Late 80's and we had the Sega Master System, again a console that you hooked up to the TV placed the cartridges in and you played games. What had changed? Well the introduction of laser sensitive peripherals were a development and other such peripherals also came along, also there was the introduction of on the move gaming with the introduction of hand held devices such as the Lynx, Game gear and Gameboy. That's a gap of around 10+ years before gaming on the move became reality and peripherals became common place.

By the early Nineties we had the Neo Geo AES and just a few years later the Playstation. By now we had moved onto Disc based media, so the move away from cartridges took even longer...around 20 years.

In 2000 the PS2 was released and mass market Internet play via a console was now a real possibility. This at the time was dubbed 'Network' Play by Sony. There had been other attempts many many years prior to this to go 'online' but this was only aimed at downloading game extras and not actually playing 'online' and it never took off in any case. So the move to playing over 'the net' took around 25 years.

By 2005 and 2006 the 360 and PS3 were released.

We still have Disc based media and online play and all the peripherals. The Wii's claim of innovation with their remotes we know is nothing new, although they have certainly now brought it to mass market. What is new though is now we can download full games (again the first time for mass market compared to early attempts) and store them on hard drives. So a move away from removable storage (save cartridges etc..) to mass storage devices in...30 years.

So big changes occured at 10 years (gaming on the move), 20 years (Cartridge to Disc media), 25 years (Online play) and 30 years (Mass storage being common place, excluding PC gaming), but in all, to get to where we are now has taken 30 years of gaming. So, how close are we to virtual reality? If you look at the evidence, a long way. The technology for all things new might already be here, but its inception? That might be further away than we think. 20 years from cartridge to Disc...its no major leap really. 30 years to get online...the Internet was born in 1957 and went mass market in the early eighties....a better leap than the change from Cartridge to Disc granted..but its taken its time.

So in reality where are we going to be in 20 years time? We may be using our TV's as a central media application in the homes, a TV for our TV, gaming and PC needs all in one, we may even get rid of discs and go all out downloads....but one thing seemc certain...we will still be sitting with a box in front of us, accessing media online or on discs and playing games on our TV's just like over 30 years ago.

Food for thought though is one big potential change...and maybe this will be the 5-10 year improvement that we have seen so far...on the move gaming....Wi Max.

Come back for the next blog that will explain all.