When looking solely at the game industry, there is a continued shift that will upend a lot of things, where consoles seem to be converging and streaming is increasing as a popular idea even despite the infrastructure, and there is more attention shown toward working conditions, plus there are just a lot of games coming out anyway.
What I didn’t account for were significant external factors that would likely put a severe hold on things, such as rampant disease, paranoia regarding such diseases, complete economic collapse, the end of modern society, and human extinction. Undoubtedly those would probably put an end to the game industry.
On the less doomsday side of things, certain staples such as GameStop and E3 are falling and this is a significant indicator of different times. Some GameStop stores are threatening to become dedicated to giant-headed similarity figures instead of just one wall of them, and E3 may just cease to happen by the end of the decade, if not the year, overshadowed by publishers holding their own events on their own time.
On the advent of a new generation of consoles, I predict that any significant roadbumps in the way of this console launch will effectively doom that generation. Consoles often have rough launches, but this era seems like the most cooled on so far. I had a rough year figured out that around 2023 would be when the industry crashes again, but doomsday would hurry that along as well, possibly hitting a breaking point by 2022. Without doomsday, it would just be about when the consoles had been out long enough for people to grow tired of the new repeated things. It would hit consoles first, then aftereffects would hit everything, and most small studios built on profit instead of passion would close, and anyone else brave enough to keep making games would be back to the bedroom coding for the time being. The big ones may just end up being bailed out or go into some kind of clothing thing. That’s also unless significant bans are placed on games anyway, in which case you just have underground coders.
On the other hand, if the momentum continues, there will be even more games, and even more things repeated, but weird ideas here and there that might catch on even if they don’t even sell a tenth of Call of Football Creed or whatever. Physical copies will most likely go the way of the PC’s, where they’re just a placeholder media, if that, with a code for a download. However, I don’t see much for consoles aside from taking another approach than “more power”. Sony and Microsoft are starting to bridge the platforms over to PC and so on, but mostly PC at the moment, even though barely. Nintendo will probably be the very last to give in. The Switch is interesting at least, it’s looking to bridge portability and power, though less powerful than its competition, which somehow doesn’t stop some publishers wanting to squeeze games onto it. And ideas held about mobile development probably helped that.
Speaking of mobile, that will probably continue because of its pure addiction, and never end, and casinos will just become entirely virtual phone apps. Some offshoot will probably briefly develop called a Pocket Gambling Device but it won’t catch on since everyone will just use the extra long iPhone 90 with 70 cameras on its back. Even if the humans go extinct, aliens or some kind of evolved lizard will pick it right back up.