What will be the next step in the gaming industry?

Is 3D the future of gaming? What about motion controls (Wii-Mote, Kinect an Move)? The industry appears to have come out of its self-proclaimed slump and that should be a good thing but at what expense. From the plethora of great games released so far in this generation, developers have come into the realization of wielding the perspective hardware to their will. 

This would normally be the time for game developers to stretch their legs so to speak with fresh ideas, new ways to do things, polish and improve their IPs to the point of near perfection. Some of the best examples of this come from Naughty Dog, BioWare, Sony, Rockstar and Ubisoft just to name a few. These companies are just a handful of the developers with the experience and know how so when they speak, gamers listen.

Now, taking the task lo develop games around a new control scheme or peripheral is risky. Even this console generation leader Nintendo knows this all to well. Isn’t it bad enough Hollywood wants to 3D just about everything? Do our games have to follow suit as well? I expect 2011 to wrap up the Uncharted, Mass Effect and Gears of War franchises, etc for now, giving us something fresh and innovative from these developers.

I hope I’m wrong about the direction the industry is trying to navigate gamers towards, but I doubt it. First off, Nintendo started it all with their Wii – the successor to their Gamecube What the system lacked in graphic power and media storage, capacity made up for it with mass marketing appeal. If you tell the public an 8 to 80 year old can play video games and usher in with “Wii want to play” the masses will eat it up and they did. So Microsoft tells the same public the controller is you, literally, and they seem to be eating it up. Unfortunately, the verdict is still out on that one, a little too early to Kinect.

Next up to bat, Sony turns to emulate its Japanese rival with tactics right out of the Art of War and says we not only do everything, but we do it better and plan to make you Move. The Consumer Electronic Show 2011 just came and went this January in Las Vegas with a smidgeon of gaming exposure with nothing worth noting at this time. So this discussion will have to continue at E3 2011 coming in June to see whether my perceptions about the direction of the game industry are founded.