2000-2010 What will it be remembered for?

[J T]

1. PS2 dominance. Yes, other systems had their places as well. But the PS2 owns the last decade.
2. Sandbox games mature. I'm not sure what the 1st sandbox game was (Zork?) but they really matured with GTA, Red Dead, and others.
3. Online console play truly arrives. Millions of MW and MW2 players online at once (immediately after launches.) Gears, Borderlands, Killzone, Twisted Metal Black Online, Sports titles like Madden and even SSX3, etc.
4. MMO's dominate the PC.
5. The rise of indie games. They can actually get attention on the major consoles now too!
6. Gaming culture starts finding their voices - in personalities (love me some Apicary) and machinima (Red v. Blue and others.)

These stand out in my mind. Guys and gals, what have I missed?

That's a good list. I would also add digital distribution, motion control, and "the casual gamer" to the mix

[J T]

There is something else that we are missing out on and that is the immense popularity of emulators and piracy. It's not from the industry, but they have a huge impact on the general gaming world. On the positive, many games that would be lost to time have been archived and kept alive thanks to emulators and piracy. This has helped game developers realize that there is still demand for retro games and they can still make a profit on their old games in the digital world. Now they are scurrying to figure out who owns the rights to what and are re-releasing old games to the buying public once again.

While piracy is largely responsible for providing a strong retro gaming culture, it has been a destructive force for new games. With the ease at which pirated games can be distributed throughout the internet, game companies now have to plan to lose a certain percent of potential profit to pirates. Game developers are less willing to take risks and are more willing to just do what they think will sell, in part, because they expect piracy. Piracy has created the need for (and ironically the solution to) DRM software. It's also riddled the internet with inane debate over the pros and cons of piracy (which, hopefully I have not just spun this thread in that direction again).

[dsheinem]

No part of January 1 - December 31, 1980 was part of the 70s.

Likewise, the oughts ended on December 31, 2009.

There is something else that we are missing out on and that is the immense popularity of emulators and piracy. It's not from the industry, but they have a huge impact on the general gaming world.

Emulation really took off in the 90s, with the growth of the internet. It's certainly not a 2000s phenomenon, nor really did it become immensely more popular in the most recent decade.

I'll give you piracy, though, as that really took off once optical media consoles were the norm and burning optical media could be done on the cheap.

[MrEco]

I think (Quite simply) that this decade will be known for having a wide and colorful variety of games and consoles that can please any kind of gamer, and which was finally able to bring all the fanboys together under one happy banner of people who no longer cared about proving they were right and wanted to just have fun playing games.

....

OK, maybe not that last thing...

[Erik_Twice]

I'll give you piracy, though, as that really took off once optical media consoles were the norm and burning optical media could be done on the cheap.

Only in consoles, piracy on casste and disks was always easy. PC gaming piracy took off with broadband, the same as movie piracy.

[Jonesy47]

I loved the games on the gamecube, but (and yes, i realize I must be in the minority on this after many conversations with other gamecube enthusiasts) i HATE that fugly controller. Yes, it worked for first party titles developed by nintendo but almost any genre other than platforming and rpgs suffered for it. Any sort of port from the ps2 or xbox didnt quite feel right either.

I remember when the wii was announced as backwards compatible and then I saw that dreamy vision of a controller, the classic controller and what did Nintendo do? They made it so you couldnt use it with gamecube games which it was OBVIOUSLY designed to do. Why else would it have the dual analog sticks?

I guess im just ranting, and yeah, i love the gamecube but that controller...god, i hate that thing so bad...

Despite how greatly I disagree with your arguement, I feel compelled to show you this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Classic-Controller- ... 2113wt_905
Yeah, as you can tell, this one is a knock-off controller that probably works like shit, but hey, the fact is, it exists. Go nuts.

Where did you FIND that thing!?!?! Ive looked for something like this as long as the wii has been around! Ive looked for mods also to convert a classic controller into a gamecube controller but alas, nothing. THANK YOU! I bought that shit real fast (only 6 bucks). I will report on the usability of the thing. Hopefully it doesnt suck too bad.

[EvilRyu2099]

The decade of Broadband internet.

Broadband started getting more widely used, and now everything revolves around online play, DLC, in-browser gaming, cloud computing, and people everywhere getting interconnected every second of every day. This 24/7 connection has altered multiplayer gaming, some DRM (Thanks ubisoft) gaming on cell phones, everything.

I have to agree broadband really expanded on the online gaming experience.. It just wasn't possible to have stable multiplayer experiences with a dial up connection..

[Lord_Santa]

and machinima (Red v. Blue and others.)

These stand out in my mind. Guys and gals, what have I missed?

you missed out on Quake Machinima (Machinima done in Quake1 and also the only way (at the time) to view them was via Quake1)



Operation Bayshield and Blahbaliscious (however you spelled it) paved the way for some great Machinima



this was in the late 90's

[RCBH928]

I am not sure about you guys
but here where I am ,
psx was pretty much a pirated console, 100% in 1998 people only got pirated software as far as I know. They came straight from Thailand as I understand

I thought cartridges were un-pirated-able ,

[Erik_Twice]

^Around here the PSX and PS2 were succesful because you could pirate them, so yeah.

You can pirate cartridges the problem was getting the roms.