I sincerely hope so...

 

Historically there has always been a 5 (ish) year cycle of videogame console generations – new console revealed, wait 5-6 years and the next one will arrive. If you look at Nintendo: NES 1986, SNES 1992, N64 1997, GameCube 2002, Wii 2006.

 

It appears that the trend is bucking, the XBOX 360 has been out for 5 years already and there has just been a new hardware revision and a new control method released for it – there’s certainly nothing announced for a new console, not even any rumours.

Wii and Playstation 3 have been around for 4 years and basically they have the same situation – new controllers for each, no new hardware announcements and no rumours.

 

Not wanting to be one who quotes the economic downturn as the reason for everything I’d like to pursue the idea that there’s some other reason for this.

 

 

 

Aside from the ‘my graphics are better than yours’ race that has always been going on, the upgrades in control have been especially important in the evolution of videogame consoles. Your Atari had an 8-way joystick and a single action button, NES had a d-pad and 2 action buttons (plus some admin buttons of course), SNES added the all-important shoulder buttons and more face buttons, N64 gave us the godsend analogue stick as well as looks only a mother could love.

 

 

Controls get you into the game. When you’re using the Z trigger in Goldeneye on the N64, you’re shooting somebody. It’s not the same as pressing B in the old days – the middle of the N64 controller is like holding a gun, you’re squeezing Z and it’s damned real (compared to just pressing B.)

 

 

Other consoles before it had peripherals that work with a certain set of games. NES had the zapper which with games like Duck Hunt let you gun down ducks from the comfort of your armchair and without the possibility of your hay fever acting up or stepping in your faithful dog’s mess. Take-up from developers on these games was low though, and unless it came as standard like the N64 controller, it was never going anywhere back then.

 

This all seemed like a natural evolution, and it was only going to lead to one thing.

 

 

 

I remember when I first saw the term bandied around, it was the early 90s – Street Fighter 2 was sucking money out of children and adults alike, Super Mario had just embarrassed himself by becoming Bob Hoskins (no it WASN’T the other way around) and Dominic Diamond was cavorting with Patrick Moore in a silly TV show called ‘The Games Master’. They had a demo of Virtual Reality in one episode.

The Virtual Reality (VR) that was envisioned involved the user putting on a gigantic headset with an integrated display and a ring bolted to the floor around the middle of the body that would detect you running/jumping etc. They had a poor test subject walking into the edge of the ring in whatever direction to take him where he wanted to go. Essentially walking on the spot but pressing into pressure sensors so the ‘game’ could move him in that direction. I would love to find that demo, but footage eludes me on YouTube so sorry about that – I’m pretty sure my memory isn’t that faulty.

 

 

Of course, this heavy-handed Tomorrow’s World-esque implementation was never to come to a commercial fruition (thank god as I don’t have the room for a big ring in my front room and I’m pretty sure bolting it to the floor would violate my tenancy agreement)... but we do seem to be slowly creeping towards VR.