Page 56 - PC Gamer - UK (February 2020)

GAMES OF THE DECADE

I
I
I
HI ST OR Y HALL OF F AME EA R L Y A C C E S S I LO CA L P L A Y TA C T I C S I PRED I C TI O N S

Loot boxes become a thing of the past Riot usurps

Robin: Though some of their stealthier forms might survive Blizzard’s
I think your run-of-the-mill loot boxes aren’t long for this
world. There’s just too much scrutiny on them these days. If throne
government regulation doesn’t kill them, publisher
skittishness will, and they’ll end up banished to the same
graveyard online passes got chucked in. The catch? I think Robin: Blizzard’s fortunes have
they’ll be replaced by something even more insidious. seemed increasingly shaky over the
last couple of years – just when you
thought the most unpopular thing
they’d do in the decade was
announce a mobile game, they
decided to spark an international
incident. Stories from inside the
studio are troubling, too. Meanwhile,
Riot’s made its play, announcing a
billion games and an entire multi-
media empire in one press event.

FUTURE

SHOCK

Our expert predictions for the decade

to come: 2020-2030

P art CPU was manufactured on 45nm
PC hardware
tech, and GPUs were on 55nm. We’ve
a gone through three or four
advances slow
transitions since then (32nm, 22nm,
Ray tracing at 4K and up is standard way down 14nm, and kind of 10nm for Intel;
40nm, 28nm, 16/12nm, and 7nm for
Tyler: At the start of the ’10s, people were complaining TSMC). Ten years from now, I expect
about not being able to read text on their SD TVs. In the Jarred: The fun prediction would be three transitions at most (eg, 5nm,
decade that followed, 1080p became normal, and then 4K to assume Moore’s Law is alive and 4nm, and 3nm), but the real
TVs became normal. Still, true 4K gaming (as in, no well and computers continue to improvements from each process
upscaling) is considered high-end today. progress in leaps and bounds. The shrink will become less noticeable. A
This is a boring, conservative prediction, but I’m going to reality: we’re hitting a wall. Actually, Core i9-9900K or Ryzen 9 3900X
say that’ll happen again: 4K fully replaces 1080p and 1440p we’ve been hitting walls for the past will still be doing OK, but your
sometime in the ’20s, and by the end of the decade, 8K and decade, but each new wall becomes graphics card will have been
up are the high-end choices. taller. Ten years ago, a state-of-the- upgraded several times.

2019 JAN 10, 2019 FEB 24, 2019 JUNE 9, 2019
BUNGIE SPLIT S
MICROSOF T
DE VOTION
WITH
BU YS DOUBLE
PULLED
AC TIVISION
FINE
Devotion is
The studio buys itself
The buying spree
voluntarily taken
back from Activision,
up beloved indie
leaving the publisher down from Steam in continues as it snaps
the midst of a
and taking the rights controversy around studio Double Fine to
to its MMO shooter an insulting depiction join its new stable of
Destiny with it,. of the leader of China. first-party devs.
56 FEBRUARY 2020