Gaming in 2020-2029 [Time capsule for your predictions]

• The battle pass will replace lootboxes as the main money-making gimmick. Except for Valve, who will hold their lootbox casino dearly until the US government itself forces them to stop.
• Everyone will take a shot at streamed gaming but Stadia will be forgotten, just like OnLive was.
• The mobile gaming market will collapse under itself, then resurrect once more in another form.

• Fullbright Company makes a spiritual sequel for Gone Home called Coming Home, but this time featuring straight characters. The industry panics as it tries to cover its hypocrisy. The game will feature nothing but slideshows of memorabilia and screencaps of MTV music videos from the '80s and '90s. Although it will be released only in February, somehow it will manage to win numerous GOTY awards by IGN and everyone else claiming that it's not actually a videogame will be ridiculed saying that they don't understand videogames and life itself.

• Ken Levine will announce a new story DLC for Bioshock Infinite called Burial in Louisiana. This story will investigate alternate realities in the Bio Inf universe a bit more, placing us in slightly altered history of the USA with white people working as slaves in cocoa fields, supervised by their black overlords. This deep and subtle reversed psychological commentary on the current situation in the United States will not go unnoticed by Kotaku, naming it Game of The Decade and even having a special edition of the DLC where Elizabeth is replaced by Patricia Hernandez who will distract enemies in battle with her gibberish.

• Bethesda will launch its own Early Access service. BugPlay will also have a slightly modified version of the Steam Workshop where modders can upload their works straight away on release to make games mostly playable. All mods and addons in BugPlay will have a monthly subscription fee where only 80% of profits will go to Bethesda and all 20% of them to volunteer modders.

• More early access games on Steam compared to 2019. People will buy them immensely and still go on community hubs complaining that they're unfinished.

• IGN, Eurogamer and RockPaperShotgun will implement a new rating system in reviews rating games with nothing but 9's and 10's with decimals between those. One of the first games with that score system will also be one of the worst releases in 2020: League of Salarians, BioWare MOBA game set in Mass Effect universe. It will receive the lowest score by IGN yet - "9/10 it's ok"

F2P (or monthly fee) and mobile gaming

I am an avid gamer. But as much as I hate to admit it the fact is gaming industry (or any industry for that matter) does not have a very bright future. New generation isn't much of a consumer.

• Battle royale games will lose popularity, including Fortnite and PUBG. This loss of popularity of Fortnite will be what determines if Epic Games Launcher remains relevant or dies
• Games that are released every year, like Call of Duty, will die and will be replaced by games with seasons and battle pass. This forms of microtransation will allow it to be supported during a good amount of years. (Pretty much already happens in popular games)
• VR will not replace mouse and keyboard or controller gaming. Instead it will fit a niche, just like steering wheels and pedals for racing games, for those who want a different kind of experience in gaming. VR headsets will also get cheaper.

With autonomous vehicles being a common sight by the end of 2029, we have the choice of spending our everyday commute with gaming.

Nvidia, Intel and AMD will follow the trend early and invest heavily into car entertainment hardware.

Also with people being less interested in spending time and effort into choosing/building/setting up their own pc builds, hardware diversity gets reduced a lot. As a consequence, gaming becomes more affordable and PCs will be mostly the same, similar to consoles today. Games will therefore be better optimized.

Instead of having monitors, we play on a new generation of projectors (light projected into a glass wall), enabling simple hologram effects.

As new studies have found out negative long term effects when gaming with young age, gaming is restricted to a certain age in most countries.

now-2023/2024
People will be bored and / or annoyed with millions of poor indie and scam games so they will be banned on steam.
Many new platforms with indie games will appear, some will survive, other will die. AAA game companies are going to make pseudo-indie games.
Moar DLCs, moar PTW, moar bugged AAA games, moar loot boxes, moar season passes, moar microtransactions.
VR gloves will be popular.

2023/2024-2026/2027
Indie is quite dead. Optical discs are completely dead. More FTP games, but unplayable as free.
More subscription-only games. Era of the great censorship begins.
Cloud gaming will become very popular.

2027-2029+
Some services are down, people are pissed off because they have lost every game they had. Great censorship prevents protests.
Subscriptions only games, cloud gaming, no private property, brave new world.

• My home will still too small for using VR equipments.(Hong Kong)
• Resident Evil – Code: Veronica remake
• No mosaic in JP games

Goblin and Coins will get big, bought by EA or Ubi and turned into an ever running series with lots of DLCs.

Lootboxes will be baned in the EU.

Steam will die and be replaced by some new big player.

More handheld consoles. The switch is already doing well for both playing at home and portability. I can see others trying for something similar.

VR will be developed a lot more. Hopefully they'll have more goggles which can fit glasses.

1. As Capcom notices that the production of actual bio-weapons is not only cheaper but also more lucrative as (re)making games, it decides to be the first AAA studio to introduce real-life video-gaming and "remakes" the Resident Evil franchise by infesting several cities world-wide with the T- and G-virus. For flavour's sake it changes it's name and logo to Umbrella. But it refuses to actually sell pharmaceutical products because of the ethical questionable and outright evil behaviour of real pharmaceutical companies. EA soon follows the new trend by introducing Modern Warfare 2030.

2. After a year-long worldwide strike from Monday till Friday for Video games the United Nations approve of a new law that forces every developer to change games in accordance to the lowdest screaming fraction in their respective game forums. Five weeks later of all of video gaming dies out as gamers have no fucking clue about game-design but will never admit it.

3. For entertainment reasons the price money for Battle Royale games tournaments will be introduced tenfold. However, at the same time the last places will be forced to hold a real battle royale. This results in one of the most practical applications of Darwin's Law slowly increasing the life standard and intelligence base line world-wide.

Well, maybe some more serious tries at possible predictions:

1. As with the increased recognition towards the end of the 2010's the trend will continue and e-sports will become a world-wide excepted sport (although it is still to early for new modern decathlon creating a cross-over between e-sports and physical sports :P)

2. VR will slowly fit a niche and VRMMO's like in manga will be first attempted. While VR will never be dominant it will become more and more important, alone for its possible application as medical and psychological treatment of patients as well as learning tool for education.

3. Laws concerning digital ownership will be fortified and an international organisation will be founded for fighting and preventing scamming and other digital crimes (in that one country i don't have to name it will become a new national day of mourning)

monthly subscription for games will be live (at least for "old" games with some new games) similar to netflix / hbo etc.. subscriptions but instead of 12$ they will be 50$ or a bit more. (not streaming, they will be full games), after all once we play one game we usually don't play it again and with all the digital thing they don't expend in CD, transport and shops etc...

a new law where all gambling will be prohibited in all videogames

VR will be cheaper for all people similar to buy a controller price.

the first move plataform with VR will start to being sell (there's already some of them working on them, just take a look in youtube videos)

we are going to get more games that make you move similar to some actual WII games, VR games like beat saber etc......

DLCs will become more expensive with less content and people will still buy them.

this will be the remake and ports decade of videogames

this also it's going to be the decade where publishers will only care about money and they are going to milk customers in all unimaginable ways.

Let's start with the present I don't have my hands on :

• first we've got VR : I'm not sure it will ever get to be a norm, "active" control has more or less been tested via kinect, ps eye & wii and each of the big houses dropped it. The technology wasn't there but the players(/developpers) needs weren't either. Now with VR visuals.... I can"t say anything, as I said I didn't get my hands(eyes) on it yet.
• Connectivity : 5G (fifth generation wireless technology)
  Not available here yet and basically not used to its full potential anywhere yet. and as for every new technology it's missing an affordable hardware. This might give way to the game streaming services or/and subscription. Then again I'm not a spotify subscriber and still buy CDs so I might be a little backward on the matter of ownership and subscriptions. And as with any network, it has to expand before being usable, and there will always be geographical disparity.
  '- AI improvements (?) dialogue wise maybe, but I'm already overwhelmed by most competitive AI (FPS/strategy).

As for gaming, seriously there's nothing really, and I mean REALLY new since 10 years into 3D (Let's say doom is first 3D, nothing new since 2003), regarding mechanics. Will graphics be more realistic, I certainly hope not for 98% of games (2% for the emotional ones I play from time to time).

So predictions! :

• Broken Sword 6 will be the best point & click of the decade, you'll love those cell-rendered 3D VR graphics, and mind-control so much you'll never know if it was a QTE or a video (or you can opt to the usual mouse control).
• Will still be wondering when FF17 will have a good discount by 2030
• Might get a VR set by 2027/2028, or a steam index in 2022 for its liquidation sale.

i think augmented reality games will be more relevant. at this stage they are very gimmicky but if they can put the technology in simple looking glasses they could change everything. basically playing games outside could be very easily achievable and people could play in tournaments like in paintball or softair. People will praise it as a healthy alternative to VR.

Same thing goes for holograms but will take a lot more time.

the next big thing will be pokemon with augmented reality glasses where you can basically catch em all in "real" :P

No games. No electricity.
Cavemen don't need these things

• The breach between gamers-on-the-go (owners of their own systems, offline gaming, mostly indie to budget titles and maybe some nintendo branch) and streaming/MMO/casual competitive gamers will increase. I can only hope that the later don't canibalize the former.

• The microtransactions will reach even more absurd levels with the increase of computer power and better algorithms. Chances are that we almost didn't notice that. And that's terryfing

• More games will be lost forever due to DRM restrictive BS

This are my predictions. Now I'm going to get drunk to cope with this,

1) DLC will peak and break finally with some stupid ass stuff by either EA or Activision.
2) "AAA" titles will become even less common as they realize they can make 3 smaller games with the same budget, you will still get "AAA" games but they will mostly if not only be from 1st party.
3) Nintendo will team up more with Microsoft against Sony whose hubris off the PS4 will lead to a weak PS5 launch.