Yeah, not gonna lie, I feel like as big of a step as online was, it was never as good as LAN was, even today (imo).

I grew up on LAN parties, and the zero lag issues were what kept me and friends coming back to hook up our machines and spend a few nights gaming. Online gaming on the other hand actually caused us to slowly drift apart, and the lag certainly didn't help either. I also found myself playing less and less competitive PVP-based games, mostly due to the fact that not every competitive game came with fully dedicated servers, which meant we had to suffer under P2P connections, which meant more lag, or worse; gamers who induce lag on purpose to gain an upper hand.

While playing online in same games may be great for me sometimes, I would still prefer going back to the LAN days if I had the chance.

Also as a last note, online gaming allowed for a host of bad practices, like MT's, battlepasses, and the eventual slow death of LAN itself (barely any game these days supports it, let alone local split screen). LAN barely had any negatives, but online still does to this day. 

Actually it is factual and provided numbers of fortnite the biggest  online shooter. I don't think there is nothing not factual about saying switch's FPS shooter online user base is minuscule compared To PC and other consoles. So saying GYRO is the biggest step in gaming in 21 century  when many developers don't implement it  on PS5, or PC doesn't make much sense to me.

The way i see this question is things that changed gaming forever and is still very irrelevant today, it's basically steam, and online play. with out them gaming wouldn't be nearly as big and they are only getting bigger.

Thanks, I forgot about Overwatch and Paladins.

Another huge step forward was the save game.

So trivial now, yet before local storage you either start from scratch each time or had level codes to skip ahead. I don't remember any games on MSX where you could save the game, always restart from the beginning, same on C64.

The first save game was in the 80's already, yet it didn't become standard until much later. Save games have definitely altered the way games are made, for the better and the worse. Focus has shifted to drawing out the game length with tons of padding instead of concentrating on the high score beating formula.

Even PC games didn't really save anything at the start. Many games were of course ported from arcade and consoles but also many made for PC games didn't bother with save states. Then stuff like Sim City and Civilization came around thanks to the power of save games! (Now where did I leave my level codes for Lemmings :p)

Eh, we were saving plenty on PS1/Saturn/N64 and several SNES games, however. The HDD was a big deal for consoles. Even of others planned to add an HDD but could not due to a shortage of cash (Hi SEGA) Xbox pushed it forward. While US PS2's had the option. Japanese first-run PS2's did not. the HDD was an external box. So Xbox having an HDD set the standard for future generations.

That's the 5th generation of consoles already... But yeah save games became big in the 90s.

Save games worked perfectly fine on memory cards. The HDD was a bit of a step backward at first, locking your save games to your console. Memory cards were much easier keeping the save games with the games while going to a friend. No faff with exporting and importing.

HDD standard made some things better, some things worse (lengthy installs, release now, finish/patch later) It's still a joy to put an older game into a retro console and just play without installing and downloading patches. And I've never lost save games until both my 360 and PS3 failed :/

Auto-save also gives me anxiety in games, never knowing where it saved and where I'll end up if I 'quit' to continue later. It felt much better saving myself at the end of a game session, like closing a book with a bookmark to continue next time. But at least you don't have your friends overwriting your save games anymore! (Well not true, they can still start new game on your profile, argh)

HDD standard did change a lot in combination with online (delivery), they kinda go hand in hand.

Amiga 500 and MSX 2 also had HDD add-ons, but I guess not technically consoles. Sold as home computers.

The ascension of internet in gaming is probably the best answer. Not only online gaming, but the possibility of downloading games on any console too.

Like people said, this century is still young, so virtual reality could evolve a lot on upcoming years.

Not just downloading games, faqs, solutions, cheats, mods, save games. Back in the day when you were stuck you were really stuck. Find a friend who might have figured it out or you're only other option was a help line. Now a simple question into Google gives you hundred solutions.

Of course the downside, online leader boards. Think you're doing well, you're 108,167th in the world lol.

And yes, VR still has tons of room to evolve in leaps and bounds. We're only at the beginning like 3D games on PS1 were.

With the OG Xbox you would use your memory cards to transfer save data between consoles. (Or just leave it connected to the back of your controller and take that instead.)

So your data wasn't trapped to the console. - I can't remember if you could set the default save location on the OG Xbox, I know on the Xbox 360 you could.

Games also got larger and more complex which necessitated it... I.E. Texture, mesh streaming.

It wasn't until the Xbox 360 was about half way through it's life cycle that games started requiring installs, before you could get away with just a memory card on a Core/Arcade console...

I don't mind installs, they allow for larger and more complex worlds to be generated... But when you see an Xbox 360 game running from optical disk and the same Playstation 3 game running from an install on the hard drive, it made people ask... What's the point?
The PS3 did run much quieter though...

Ha yeah, I forgot how noisy those drives could be. 360 with the 12x speed DVD ROM drive made quite a racket.
Yet those 10 minute installs between acts in MGS3 were insane :/

Anyway it's no contest now after the move to SSD. On 360 Halo actually ran a bit slower from HDD, optimized to use both DVD and small install, reading from two locations at the same time. Yet at 5 GB/s vs 128 mbps of 4K blu-ray, no point. Downloading is faster now than installing from disc (well for some people :p took me 30 hours to install Sea of Thieves on PS5 lol)