The new Decade

Well, it seems that 2010 has decided to show its unpredictable face. What new trends shall begin and which ones shall end in the new decade? Remember the 1970's was the "Golden Age of the Arcade", the 1980's was the "Nintendo Empire" (Nintendo nearly monopolised the video game company until Supreme Court slapped them on the wrist for anti-trust laws), the 1990's was the "Birth of the Polygon" (Starfox on the SNES and up, and even games like A Link to the Past were seeing polygons; the N64 and PS were the starters of nothing but polygons), and the 2000's was the "Birth of HD", in which nowadays most games are in High Definition resolutions on computers and almost any game console with the exception of the Wii, DS, and PSP. Now, what is 2010 going to bring for us? At this rate, it seems as though it could be the "Reign of Motion Control" considering that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are getting interested in motion controls. However, I'm also thinking that video games are starting to be online exclusive, in which you have to download games in order to play them, which is what we can do with the Wii/DSi Shop, PlayStation Network, and Xbox Live Marketplace. However, as Internet speeds increase each decade and as we gain more space and better compression, we could see massive games like Grand Theft Auto expansions (which are over 1 GB) become full blown games that we could just pay $30-50 to download. This could be great for production since cartridges and discs wouldn't have to be produced, thus making it cheaper. Remember, the most a N64 game cost was $80 due to the cartridges (well, Nintendo of Europe was accused of price fixing), yet the PS production didn't take long thanks to the discs. So, all we can do now is simply wait until the next generation of consoles to come out. However, for some reason, it seems that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are more interested in improving their current systems. The Xbox 360 has already exceeded the lifespan of the average generation, and the Wii and PS3 are getting close to their lifespan. Then again, the N64 lasted only 8 years and was able to create innovative things like the Expansion Pak and Rumble Pak. We can only wait and see.