By Kieran Isaac

HIGHlights staff

     Over the last decade the game industry has had its ups and downs, from the exploding success of the Half-Life franchise, to the failure of the overly ambitious OUYA independent game system. The industry has seen many successes and just as many failures that will determine the future of the industry and the future of some developers.

     The Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 were released recently. The Xbox One was originally price at $500 and initially was jumping off the shelves, even difficult to find, and is said to soon be lowered to $400, just like its competitor, the PlayStation 4. When they debuted they had very few games that interested people until the first quarter. Titanfall, Dark Souls 2, Thief and Infamous Second Son all released in the first quarter of 2014, even though they were all released for the 360 and Ps3, many bought them for the new consoles as well.

     Sony revealed the PlayStation 4, or a few details on it, in early 2013, teasing the public and creating hype for the upcoming release, a basic marketing strategic ploy. The presentation received nothing but positive feedback. Shortly after Sony’s press conference, Microsoft revealed its new console with many cool yet questionable features. The presentation received a lot of negative feedback. Microsoft corrected its mistakes by listening to consumers and adjusting to their input.

     A game console’s life span usually lasts a decade or slightly longer. With new advancement in technology, that life span could last a little longer. With such technologies as the Oculus Rift, a pair of goggles built with motion traction, it is possible to literally put you in a first-person experience. With technology like the Oculus becoming a reality, who says that gaming will stop there? The Oculus is the closest thing “gamers” has ever come to virtual reality, which is now only experienced in movies like IMAX or 3D.Companies like Nintendo and Capcom used to be considered gods of gaming, but due to Nintendo’s targeting a younger demographic and the occasional nostalgic young adult, their sales have plummeted. Capcom has become a victim of the repeat bug, when a company shoots out the same product over and over, making minor changes and passing it off as a new experience. Because gamers are often suckers for a new thing, Some companies get away with it. Treyarch and Infinity Ward, the two companies responsible for the yearly release of the over- loved series, Call of Duty, are examples. These developers get away with this virus each year while Capcom, a developer of such incredible, memorial experiences of epic proportions, slowly dies. Whatever game it is feels like it is something out of a movie. Resident Evil 6 and Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen are prime examples of epic games.

     Big game industries aren’t the only people that can make epic games. Independent developers, or Indies, have come a long way. Indie developers, as their name suggests, don’t have large sums of money to create a large scale product. But that doesn’t mean their games are bad. Many Indie games are better than most triple A titles, so good that a handful of them were ported to console. Indie games such as Minecraft, Don’t Starve, and Terraria were all ported to consoles last year. Indie games are on the rise, with new developers popping up all the time the game industry is receiving many new kinds of games with innovative ideas.

     Consoles aren’t the only gaming hardware out there. Hand held devices such as the Nintendo DS or the PSP Vita or even the Nvidia Shield also have a slew of great games and features, most of them being minor games in a franchise but still great despite that fact. The Nvidia Shield is capable of “beam” technology. Say someone has been playing a game for a pretty long time, getting tired of sitting with an aching. The Nvidia Shield allows for them to beam their game from the computer to the Nvidia Shield.

     PC gaming has been around just as long as game consoles have, and they have grown so much since then. PC gaming exploded a while back but still continues to attract gamers while pushing others away at the same time. Game companies, for a while now, have been producing games for PCs as well. A PC is capable of optimizing games for performance or quality of the game. PCs have one big pro and con when it game to playing video games. The hardware of the system decides what your computer rig can run and can’t run. Companies like Razer and Nvidia create programs that allow for the complete optimization of most games to look and perform better.