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Will NFTs still be a big deal by December? Is Bloodborne finally coming to PC? We’re pondering our orbs.
PC gaming is constantly transforming in surprising ways. New genres rise and fall, games that are being ignored one day become global phenomena the next, and people like Microsoft now. (Having covered PC gaming through the Games for Windows Live and Windows 8 eras, that last fact still surprises me now and then.)
It’s hard to predict exactly what’s ahead. Some might say it’s foolish to even try. But those same people might also say that I should stop trying to do elaborate Rocket League aerials that I’m obviously incapable of pulling off and instead just focus on hitting the ball into the net, and am I going to let that stop me from whiffing on nine out of ten shots? Absolutely not.
Once again, I’ve asked the PC Gamer team to gather all their videogame knowledge and gaze into the future Foundation-style. What will the fate of our high refresh rate empire be in 2022? Here are our best (or maybe just boldest) guesses:
With Elden Ring releasing this year, it’s time to let a lot more people play Bloodborne, even if it’s not fully remade like the PlayStation 5 Demon’s Souls. All Bloodborne needs is 60 fps and support for some high resolutions. It’s a vital release that helped shape modern action games and it would be a crime not to have a semi-updated version of it. It’s not even my favorite in the series, but it’s a game I’m dying to play again. —Tyler Colp, Associate Editor
Sorry, Tyler. I’ve lost faith. The dream is dead, and will stay dead until we see a PS5 remaster. Only then will I dare to hope. —Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor
I predict a return to the southern US, but not just a new Vice City standing in for Miami. The map will cover all of Florida this time, which is ripe for Rockstar’s satirical takes on American culture. You’ll have a city standing in for Orlando (theme parks ahoy), Kennedy Space Center (where you can steal a space shuttle), the everglades for wildlife and airboating, the panhandle for rural backwoods areas, Boca Raton (rich people retire there), and hey, why not throw in Cuba and the Bahamas off the coast? GTA 6 will be full of sun, sand, and southerners. Maybe. And if you insist I get bold with this prediction: it’ll actually launch on PC at the same time as consoles this time. For real. —Christopher Livingston, Features Producer
Note this is not an invite to send me more email on the subject. I’m very comfortable with being last to the party on this one. —Tim Clark, Brand Director
Or it could be terrible. Who knows? There’s barely been any time to think through the uses for or consequences of NFTs. Industry execs have just been saying what they always say about new tech—stuff like «this is a technology that’s coming» and «we can’t ignore it,» which is what Ubisoft said about 3DTVs in 2010—and none of the wishful speculation from blockchain evangelists has convinced me that NFTs are really going to transform gaming in the near future.
The term «play-to-earn» was made up without an actual trend for it to describe, and there are a ton of barriers to realizing the decentralized marketplace I suggested. Most game publishers have thus far worked to prevent players from exchanging in-game items for currency, at least outside of their platforms, and Valve actually got in a bit of legal trouble over third-party CS:GO skin gambling sites. Right now, Valve doesn’t allow Steam games to include functionality for exchanging NFTs, and Apple is fighting the hell out of every company that challenges its control over iOS transactions (most notably Epic Games). This isn’t something that’s just going to be shoved into place with meme power.
The NFT talk is mostly vapor right now, and at the speed things move at these days, I suspect that the value of ape drawings will have corrected itself by December 2022, and we’ll be talking about Starfield by then, not fungibility and tokens. (If I’m making a risky prediction here, it’s that Starfield won’t be delayed to February 2022.) —Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor
I think 2022 is the year we finally see another traditional Nintendo genre leap to PC with a surprise hit. But which one? Maybe we’ll finally see a breakout Smash-alike or creature catcher or social sim. Maybe it will be a Mario Party-like boardgame and minigame mashup. What if, somehow, a peripheral piece of hardware catches on and we’re suddenly drowning in Wii Sports-alikes on PC? — Lauren Morton, Associate Editor
After a teaser suggesting the return of characters from the original trilogy and a focus on Shepherd’s legacy, a full reveal and trailer of the next Mass Effect (release date: way off) will show there’s way more Mass Effect Andromeda in its DNA than anyone thought. It’ll be an attempt to unify the two storylines, to the vocal disdain of Andromeda’s haters. —Jody Macgregor, AU/Weekend Editor
Even though it probably won’t be the optimal experience, there are still plenty of games I’d love to muck around on while away from my PC, but I’m going to have to be ruthless about what I keep on the device. With a 512GB SSD on the priciest version, I’ll be running low on space constantly. And when I look at the physical size of the thing, and the beefy price tag, I also start to wonder if I’d really want to risk taking it out of the flat that often.
For me—and I think a lot of you, too—it’s probably going to end up being a streaming device, using Remote Play while the game runs on my PC in the other room. It’s going to be a secondary device. And that’s why I don’t see it really having much of an impact. It’s like VR, cloud gaming and Steam Link: pitched as ambitious game-changers, but in reality just back-ups when you wanted a change from sitting in front of your main device. I got rid of my Steam Link, but I still use the app version on my Shield TV, and both cloud gaming and VR continue to do their thing, but it’s also really easy to forget they exist for months and months. Steam Deck is going to share the same fate. —Fraser Brown, Online Editor
But, hear me out, what if the opposite of that happens, 2022 turns out to be the year of the Steam Deck, and we’re all still using them when it’s over? —Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor
Tyler has spent over 1,200 hours playing Rocket League, and slightly fewer nitpicking the PC Gamer style guide. His primary news beat is game stores: Steam, Epic, and whatever launcher squeezes into our taskbars next.
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