When Will Video Game Consoles Take Up a Room in Your House?

Kotaku on how gaming and holograms look to couple up:

We are creatures driven by discovery. Why do you think Skyrim did so well? Why do you think New Vegas failed? The former facilitated discovery and exploration; the latter was too focused on being a good RPG to care about the world it had created.

The future of games is going to capitalize on this. Arguing that we should eliminate the concept of immersion in games, that the immersive sim should be dead, or anything else along similar lines, is like arguing that we shouldn’t have voice acting and ought to stick with scrolling text. It is an argument that says “games should not be more than they already are!”

As the writer says, it’s inevitable.

And we’ll likely see the beginnings of the future upon the advent of the next generation of consoles.

Microsoft and Sony continue to prepare for the release of the sequels to the Xbox 360 and the PS3, tentatively named the ‘720’ and the ‘Orbis.’ Discussions online have started to billow: note here and here and here. Both companies wish to remain mum on details, however.

Nevertheless, we have access to information about specs.

And we also know something about the names. 720 makes sense. It’s a progression of the previous system: the 360. Sony’s, however, is different. And it coincides with their latest handheld system: the Vita. Kotaku, in a different piece, points this out:

It’s also a name loaded with meaning. The word “Orbis” itself, from Latin, means circle, or ring, or even orbit. Not terribly helpful. Combine it with the name of Sony’s new handheld system, though, and you have the common term Orbis Vita (or, in strict Latin, Orbis Vitae). Which means “The circle of life”. Could the Vita be playing a very important role in the development and use of the next PlayStation home console? Maybe!

Both systems promise to be really cool. They’re probably going to blow all of our minds.

So how does this relate to the gaming and holograms?

These announcements arrived in the same year that a team at Queen’s University created something like a holodeck from Star trek. From Enterprise Communications:

Created by Professor Roel Vertegaal, director of the Human Media Lab, and his team at the university in Ontario, Canada, the technology, known as TeleHuman, has been likened to Star Trek’s holodeck where people can walk around a 3D hologram of the remote person they are engaging in conversation; 360°, real time, 3D view! What makes it so realistic is that the new technology captures the visual cues in 3D that we would normally miss in 2D, such as a gaze or look, posture of the body, a slant or nod of the head, etc.

This, too, relates to Tupac’s “performance” at the Cochella Music Festival — even if it wasn’t a real hologram.

Obviously, we won’t be jumping into virtual worlds once Sony and Microsoft release their latest systems. We are, though, looking at the future. Technology continues to expand at unbelievable rates. It looks like holograms will soon be a reality. And after all, if they work for video conferencing, then they’ll certainly work for games.

All I can say is this: Tea, Earl Gray, Hot.