There's been a lot of "this is where the future is" postering from "leading industry figures" recently. Its just about reassuring investors that they are moving with current trends. Since the 2008 crash EA's shareprice has been trundling along the bottom and people don't feel like dropping £40 for games anymore.

Pretty much everyone wants out of the high-risk AAA console titles and wants to pile into freemium online webbrowser games (a lower return/lower dev cost but more constant and secure revenue stream for the popular titles), cross-platform mobile titles and a big emphasis on multiplayer/social/casual games. But they better be quick, this new gaming space has flooded with startups over the last few years and over the next few years the winners and losers will make themselves known as consolidation occurs. The future for developers that make it through these turbulent times will be to develop cheaper, multiple titles simultaneously. The titles that succeed more than end up covering the losses on the ones that don't.

Plus, the very idea of a "games console" is about to drop off of a cliff. PS/Xbox are unlikely to reveal a next-gen console any time soon. We'll see a switch back to PCs, except this time they are cheap, low end machines, netbooks, mobiles, tablets and internet-enabled TVs. Plus there'll be a continued rise in casual/girl gamers whom these platforms target (now that developers have realised most don't inhabit the same places male gamers do - nor want to). We'll also see titles that are identical on diverse multiple platforms, using cloud services to store progress meaning you can switch from PC to mobile phone/PSP/etc when you're out and about and keep playing an identical title, possibly for one price. If mobile networks can keep up with demand (most can't right now), even mobiles will be just streaming all these games through their browsers too. "Closed" platforms (nintendo, PS, Xbox) will take a pounding. The only things worth using on these things in 5 years time will be the blu-ray/DVD player or the browser (and that's only because their users haven't upgraded their TVs). But I'm sure they are all these platforms are considering integration of streamed gaming services as we speak.

Unfortunately for some of us, as a result, I think long, expensive, narrative-centric epic games will take a back seat, so in a way he is kind of correct. They won't go away completely but the way we consume will change drastically.

He doesnt say single player is finished so thats slightly bad journalism there. I think hes implying that some how they should be linked so its not just 25 hours then never pick the game up but that it continues on past that.

I think in a way he is right. People are more reluctant to play a game with only single player because its not considered good value. Even Mass Effect 2 very replayable story and with its solid dlc support has gone down in price a lot in the year its been out.

This is an idea I had a long time ago that the 2 modes should somehow mix. Mainly the idea came about because there are games like CoD where people just dont play the single player and there are people who dont like multiplayer. I dont mind either but I always thought if Im making progress in the story or multiplayer it would be cool if i could take it online or vice versa.

I wasnt a fan of Halo Reach and it went wrong in a lot of areas. One thing it did do was link its single player with the multiplayer well using a credit system. It works quite well. It would be cool if there were story exclusive armour and weapon unlocks that you can find in areas of the game and then take that into multiplayer and also what you unlock in multiplayer you can use in single player. Rainbow 6 has something like this with its fully customisable avatars throughout the whole game. This and a credit system would work well together.

Its about bringing the 2 modes together as a more complete package rather than having an end for single player.