The future of gaming is notoriously hard to predict; after all, who in 2015 would have expected us to be where we are today?

So take your best shot; what do you think gaming will look like in the year 2035? What will be the state of Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox? What will video games themselves be like? What do you think?

The Switch 3 has been out for a few years and has the power of a PS5 Pro.
Xbox's new direction has earned them a larger share of the market as well as being the leader in Gaming revenue and profits.
Playstation still working on trying to create that perfect GAAS.

Games still not able to keep a steady 60 frames/sec.  

I'm sorry, but why would I want to predict something so depressing? It's bad enough as it is today.


So the happiest thing I can predict is this. I'll be dead.

By then instead of 8nm chips, Nintendo is then using 5nm ones of today.
This will allow them to make use of the same power draw of today, but gain about ~20% in performance (from higher frequencies).

That is not a big enough jump to allow Nintendo to make a Switch 3, that is as powerful as the PS5, let alone the PS5pro.
Nvidia will have newer tech, that will ofc, help the jump be bigger than just 20% or so, gained from going to a smaller fabrication node.
However it won't be enough to reach a PS5.

You cannot have a 30watt handheld (docked) that beats out a ~160-180watts PS5.... not even in 2035 (imo).
(lets not kid ourselves, the PS5 is like ~4 times the power of a Switch 2, atleast, in terms of performance.)


As for Xbox, sure.... they are a 3rd party developer with large gaming revenue and profits.
And yes.... Playstation by then is likely still struggleing with "the perfect GAAS".  *cries inside*

*edit:
BTW the same is true for playstation and potentially xbox.
The gains from node shrinkage, has gone down alot, as we reach closer and closer to the impossibly small levels.
The PS6 and XSX2, won't be massively more powerfull than current gen consoles, without vastly increasing power draw levels (imo).

People will be watching AI let's players playing games made by AI

-Oh, you said 2035? Unless neural interfaces break into the mainstream in the next ten years gaming probably won't look that different from today. Nintendo could play it safe with a ~Switch 3 but just as likely won't be able to resist trying to reinvent the wheel again. Xbox may become third party in all but name if recent trends continue. Sony will have the PS6 and 7 to fall back on when they all but inevitably don't give their side project(s) the support they need to really succeed. 

As for the games themselves, real time ray and path tracing will be mature enough to make raster obsolete for big budget titles. Hopefully physics sims stop taking a back seat to other tech. The biggest differences, like it or not, will come from developments and integrations of AI. Faces could be deepfaked for even more realism, subtle animation behaviors could be improvised on the fly, automatic lip syncing will continue to improve, npc's could ad lib lines and responses to the player, ChatGPT and the like could become a crutch for programmers and other developers like it's becoming for students now. AI is developing so fast it's hard to predict where it will be ten years from now. If you'd told me five years ago where it would be today I wouldn't have believed you. 

Nintendo will dominate the home market with the Wii U 2 while the Vita 2: Livin la Vita Loca will be the number one selling handheld.

We'll be playing games that look worse than 720p but say they are 8k upscaled. Games will cost 159,99 but wages will be the same and you can pay in weekly installments. The 1tth gen consoles still cost 1,500 euro and you pay monthly for the OS, it litterally doesn't turn on without Internet and a subscription to the online service. Chinese games have become the gold standard while western games fail to exceed them in sales or praise. Rockstar are just about to drop Red Dead Redemption 3. VR is still niche :(.

Truly I don’t think gaming will exist in any meaningful way by then. Whatever is left of the industry will only be enjoyed by the 1% who can afford it and it’ll likely only be 1 or 2 GaaS games that exist. The other 99% of us will have a lot more to worry about than gaming by then.

Indeed. The PS6 will 100% be just a PS5 Pro on UDNA and Zen 5c/6c that upscales from 1080p/60fps. I'd be too expensive otherwise.

If the Switch 3 is late 2033, it could use the N2 node and be reasonably comparable to the upcoming PS Portable despite a lower power envelope (= slightly better than the Series S in raster but with ML upscaling and frame generation). Or Nintendo could be even cheaper than 6-7-year-old nodes the next time around, who knows.

How these platforms (and the myriad "Xbox PC" consoles) will be faring in the markets is anyone's guess.