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The accessibility wave has begun, it is just a matter of the console companies continuing to ride it. The Wave started with Nintendo it will be driven by Nintendo and the other companies will ride in their shadow to the finish.
When most people talk about accessibility, they seem to conjure up images of simplified, or dumbed down, gameplay. What they don't really understand is that accessibility is about making something approachable by someone not familiar with it while still leaving the ability for aficionados can master it.
Take the game of Chess. The rules are pretty simple. Every type of piece moves in its own way and the goal is to position the opposing player's king in so much that they cannot make a move without leaving their king vulnerable. Simple enough that a kid can learn to play it. Yet at the same time entire clubs of aficionados have risen up and we have world wide Chess championships.
This is an example of accessibility in game design that we can currently fullfi but is not the focus of my arguments. I am talking about accessibility of technology.
Nintendo brought accessibility in controls. Did they reduce the number of buttons on the controller? No. The Game Cube had 3 shoulder buttons, four face buttons, two analog sticks and a D-pad. The Wii has 3 shoulder buttons, five face buttons, one analog stick, one D-pad, an IR sensor and two motion controllers. If they didn't reduce the number of buttons, how is it more accessible? Two main reasons. One, the form factor was design to allow those familiar with a normal tv remote control to pick the Wii controller up and hold it. Two, the motion cotrols allows for controls that mimick real life movements depicted in the game. This advance in accessibility was so effective at expanding the market for video games that the Wii is the best selling console ever, Sony copied the controls, and Microsoft took it to the next level.
Nintendo also made 3d technology accessible to the masses with the 3DS. Sony is trying to push 3D on their PS3, but it requires the player to buy a special TV and wear the stupid glasses. But the 3DS requires none of that. You buy the system and boom you have 3D. The people watching you play see the 3D as well. That is accessibility.
So what advances will be made to make gaming more accessible in the future? I guess we could look at what is currently happening in the game indutry. Apple has made digital distribution accessible and expected by the masses. Apple and Google have made touch controls accessible and ubiquitus in the mobile industry that Sony's NGP will have touch screens and the 3DS continues to use the DS touch screen.
While I don't see a new generation of home consoles coming for another couple of years, I do see the advances that have been made toward accessibility this generation to continue and be expanded upon and improved in the next generation. What those exact advances might be, I don't know, but I can't wait to find out.
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-I have never played this genre of game before.
-I have played this kind of game once or twice.
-I have played this kind of game a fair amount.
-I have played this kind of game before, but I am not familiar with this particular one.
-I played the previous installment of this franchise. What's different? (for sequels)
-I am a master of this game.
And based on what you choose, you will get a tutorial/crash course/review tailored to your specific needs.
There are other ways to do this as well. The Nintendo Autoplay technology is on the right track. If a player is having trouble getting passed a section of the game, allow the player to watch the computer do it and then try it themselves if the think they can.
There are other ways to explore accessibility that is not limited to tutorials though.
Accessibility to new players is a really important consideration. Ramping up complexity or difficulty in a sensible way can also lead to higher player retention. A common digital example that comes to mind is World of Warcraft. When a new player starts, they don't have ALL of the choices in the game presented to them at once. That would be overwhelming and confusing! Instead, players start off with about two basic skills, and over time, more aspects of the game are introduced.
So even if we're not going to far as reducing the overall buttons ever used in the game, considering the rate at which additional buttons are introduced to the player can be just as important.
Thing is, this accessibility thing is already happening or already happened. It already drove the industry. the real thing that's going to drive the next generation is the spreading of the already present methods and techniques coupled with a de-abstracting movement within videogames.
Sufficient technology is very cheap and accessible nowadays and from that, coupled with the existing accessibility, will create more intuitive and natural games that will come closer to real-life instead of abstracting. WiiMotionPlus togheter with WiiSports Resort will be one of the gate-openers. Perhaps also Mount & Blade, this generation of FPS-games and so forth. The upcoming Zelda could become very important in this regard (could, because the game seems to be riddled with puzzles then actual open-form action). Also upcoming Guild Wars 2 is another one to keep an eye out.
The industry really has to start putting it's heads togheter to create complex games on one side (complex in that it nears reality intuition-wise) but combined with simpler controls and gameplayconcepts on the other by tapping into the intuitive-improving tech out there (the Wii's IR pointer and MotionPlus, Move's pointer, Kinects something and so forth). FPS-makers really need to start asking themselves if they really need to use all those buttons on a X360-controller. I have a design document for a FPS-game that only uses 4 buttons, and a movement and aiming medium.
This next generation of consoles will see the advances made in processing this generation continue, but the accessibility introduced by Nintendo will be improved and expanded upon.
As for complexity, yes we will need it. There is no reason why complexity cannot exist along side of accessibility. I think that is one of the core components of many popular and accessible games such as the Sims and Wii Sports.
To use an example: what's the difference between Wii Sports and MLB: The Show? Wii Sports obviously offers up a less complex game of baseball, but is it necessarily less faithful to the spirit of the actual game? Not really; in fact it seems to speak much closer to the experience of playing baseball than the abstract pitching/hitting systems seen in most other baseball games. In Wii Sports, all you have to understand are the fundamental rules of baseball, while sports games targeted towards genre aficionados don't just presume players know how to play baseball, they presume an intimate familiarity with concepts which are by and large only familiar to baseball fans. In order to get a good play experience out of just about any non-"casual" sports title on the market, you pretty much need to already be a fan of the sport in the first place. If these titles did a better job of teaching new players how to play, what all the statistics and numbers meant, and more importantly, presented them in an easy to understand fashion that doesn't require a prior knowledge, the barrier of entry would be significantly lower.
What Nintendo has done both in their software design and their platform is effectively made the experience of playing a game more in-tune with our everyday operation in the world, and done a better job at presenting information that is usually only presented in ways that "gamers" can understand. Gaming is so much, at its heart, about interface... so much so that we partially define entire genres around it - strategy, role-playing game, shooter, and, yes, casual. We might look at this sort of thing and think that it "dumbs down" gaming, and to some degree, I think that's true - it helps remove barriers that keep certain people out - but it's more important to look at it for what it really is: the birth and growth of games as simulation, rather than games as abstraction.
Mount & Blade fighting system just uses 4 directional keys, left and right mouse button and the mouse cursor, making it a very simple system on one side, but also complex because timing, direction of swings and so forth come in mind. The proliferation of more powerful PC's and physics engines made it possible for one Turkish couple to make such a combat system.
Just having accessibility means nothing if there isn't any complexity added. Videogames need to present a feeling of growth towards players or they are kinda bad as a videogame.
No they can't. The 3d sweet-spot is too small for 2 people to cuddle into. The user-interface on some of the Nintendo built-in stuff does encourage you to pass the 3DS around though :)
Edit: Even the new 3DS is a failure for lefties. Except now lefties don't even have the choice between moving (analog thumb nub) or pointing (stylus) because Nintendo has failed to make the 3DS symmetrical.
That is what the next generation will be about. They will be improving the accessibility introduced this generation.