EKGaming’s ‘Conversation Series’ is all about giving you, the gaming community, a voice. There are plenty of things to debate and talk about in the gaming world, but all too often the voice of gamers is forgotten in the shuffle. In ‘Conversation Series’ we give gamers a platform to voice their opinions on and encourage open and friendly debate in comments and on social media. Interested in writing a “Conversation” piece? Pitch us your idea here. 

The gaming industry is in a strange place right now. Microtransactions are pissing off gamers everywhere. The indie scene is thriving. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have each released a successful new/updated console in the past year. Atari has unveiled plans for some sort of new console. Mario and Zelda titles were two of the biggest games of the year. Single player campaigns are struggling while multiplayer fights to rule the roost. But not couch co-op, that’s being slowly but surely eradicated for two of the three consoles. And Minecraft is still a big thing. 

Now that we’re four years into this console generation, Switch excluded, it’s safe to start looking ahead to what the industry might look like in another 4 or 5 years.

Halfway through the lives of the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii, it was easy to see a new generation of consoles on the horizon, but that’s not the case this time around. There’ll surely be some new hardware available by the time 2022 roles around, but it probably won’t be a revolutionary PS5 or Xbox Two Y.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. In five years 4K and 60 FPS will be the norm. AR and VR will be everywhere, easily accessible and will hopefully have a significantly lower barrier to entry. We’ll still be waiting on Kingdom Hearts 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops V: Return to Modern Warfare will probably be among the top ten best-sellers for the year.

We won’t have yearly releases of sports games anymore though. EA’s already made it clear that they wish to break away from this trend and by 2022 it’ll just be regular updates with new games debuting every few years. 

Microtransactions will be different by then as well. How different? Who knows. But something has to give in the next five years. Developers are going to find a way to not piss off their entire customer base.

Indie games will continue to get better and AAA studios will begin to feel the strain from their success. Smaller studios will form and a new breed of developers will come into existence. AA studios will be former indies who’ve found success and funding, but still aren’t level with the biggest players in the game. 

Discs will be a thing of the past, 5TB hard drives will be the norm and game streaming will be much more prevalent, though it won’t have taken over, yet.

Esports will be regularly broadcast on networks like ESPN and NBC, but that won’t matter because Twitch will be dominating and Amazon will have all but taken over the world. 

The newest consoles from Microsoft and Sony won’t be astronomically better than the Xbox One X or PS4 Pro, but they will be powerful enough to run intense VR.

Korea’s dominance of esports will wane and a South American team will come out of nowhere to win the 2022 LoL Championship, brought to you by Gatorade.

Gaming will still be fun, but many people will complain that’s it’s gone too mainstream and that true gaming can only be found on retro consoles like the PS2.

That, or a Last of Us-esque apocalyptic event occurs and gaming is a luxury that none of us can afford. That’s a possibility too. 

What are your thoughts on how the gaming landscape will look five years from now? Let us know in the comments or on social media!