The Generation Gap

The Tech Guy

Life away from a single, unconnected box was something that Jason Gregory, lead programmer at Naughty Dog, agreed with. As a Sony studio Naughty Dog is on the very edge of what PlayStation 3 can do, and it will be the studio that Sony will turn to when they want to show what the next PlayStation can do.

"Hardware can grow in lots of different ways. It can grow in terms of a single console, it can grow in terms of the capability of the cloud or the web, and I think all of those are pretty exciting avenues for the future of games."

Unsurprisingly for a programmer, he wants improvements that will change the power of machines, allowing for the very smallest improvements that would have a big impact on the way AAA titles for console feel to play.

"There's a lot of room still for technology to grow and for the technologies in games to grow," he says.

"We've done quite a bit of exploration into 3D graphics and we've come quite a ways there but in terms of say physics, cloth simulation, fluids, all of these things, more horsepower is just going to mean better quality simulations in those areas, and that will lead to even richer environments. And then things like massive hordes of AI driven characters, so I think given better hardware the industry will just continue to do more and more interesting things."

Saying the next generation will mean a character's t-shirt looks a little prettier might seem obvious, but a developer struggling to create a really beautiful AAA could be forgiven for thinking all that had been forgotten in the gold rush for casual gamer's dollars. While everyone wants whatever game they're playing to look pretty, no one is ditching mobile games because the texturing on the Angry Birds' feathers is a little off.

The Mobile Guy

One man who is right at the heart of the mobile revolution is the ebullient Oscar Clark, PapayaMobile's very own evangelist.

We're not talking about stuttered generational changes anymore, because the joy of online is iterative. So we've gone from land grab moments to an ongoing evolution

Oscar Clark, PapayaMobile

"I don't know what the next generation means anymore," he admits, adjusting his hat. He's spent years working with the "next big things" in mobile and online games, always around ten years before people started calling it that.

"I'm not entirely sure the next console is going to be an evolutionary step change, necessarily," he says. He thinks the big change will come when the services become bigger than the box they ship with.

"What will happen to the PSN Store, the Xbox Live, will they become more important than the device itself? I'd like to think so. And if they don't I think it will be interesting to see what happens to the console."

Rather than a box that can do everything, he predicts we'll see more boxes, especially as the world becomes more connected, because "we're not talking about stuttered generational changes anymore, because the joy of online is iterative. So we've gone from land grab moments to an ongoing evolution."

He even suggests the next generation is about men, in a room, making something that people want to play.

"The opportunity to make dramatic changes is open to almost anybody now, so you've got two man bands in China able to make a thousand dollars a day just by making a really good social game for mobile phone. It's not big in the huge scheme of things, but for those two guys in China that's a lot of money. Actually from a game development point of view, that's a real innovation."

The Digital Guy

Whatever these new devices that Clark predicts are, they'll need content, and discs are starting to look like quite an old fashioned way to deliver that content. Dan Connors is the CEO of Telltale Games, which has been delivering digital episodic content in the form of Sam & Max and Back To The Future long before it was fashionable.

He thinks the big hardware manufacturers will still lead the pack even as the industry shifts from physical media into machines that focus on digital content, and that we'll be all be doing the cha-cha with a virtual friend in the near future.

The next generation is still going to require intelligent hardware architecture, and I think the leaders are still the people who can do that - Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo

Dan Connors, Telltale

"Digital distribution allows us to reach more customers, devices like the tablet and the phone make it really easy to play, but something like Kinect creates a whole new way of interfacing - so being able to talk to the game, being able to dance with NPCs, being able to do all this stuff that probably is a few years off, but not that far away," he predicts, sat in a little booth surrounded by posters for his latest project, The Walking Dead.

"Once the opportunity is there people are going to build them. That's still going to require intelligent hardware architecture, and I think the leaders are still the people who can do that - Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Their devices are still going to allow the most cutting-edge interactions with content, and it just makes sense for them to be able to own the storefront, because everyone's connected and they can. That's where the transition is going to lie."