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My dear PC gamers, it is a new year, and so it is time for me to don my sparkly purple soothsaying hat and let you know what you should expect over the coming twelve months. It's a bit hard to make predictions of what all will occur in 2015 that will make you super happy/sad/smirk that you saw it coming, but I'm going to do it anyway. Despite all the disparate genres, hardware setups, and subreddits that PC gaming adheres to, there're still a few things almost all of us care about. Stuff that I'm going to predict the hell out of.
Oculus Rift ships, doesn't change the world (yet)
Oculus has fallen into a comfortable little cycle of showing off a new development kit, sticking around to hear the lustful sighs of tech bloggers, then going quiet for a quarter or two. But even with bookoo Facebook bucks keeping Palmer Luckey, John Carmack, and crew working in comfort (it's a good thing, too, since that Kickstarter cash had to run out long ago) they can't wait too much longer to ship an actual consumer version.
Valve's Steam Controller releases, is just another gamepad
Remember the first time you saw a mock-up of the Steam Controller? Valve's bizarre creation looked more like a robot owl than a traditional gamepad, complete with a big ol' circular trackpad for each thumb and a glowing touchscreen set right in the middle. It was meant to satisfy the diverse demands of PC gaming while delivering the couch-friendly comfort you'd want from a living room computer.
Valve doesn't announce Half-Life 3 (sorry)
Divide and factor the number of letters in this sentence to arrive at the number '3' any way you want, Half-Life 3 isn't coming in 2015. A projected release date for Half-Life 3 isn't coming in 2015. Any official statement about Half-Life 3 from Valve beyond 'yeah, we still want to make that' isn't coming in 2015. I'm terribly sorry, I really am.
Facebook reveals it's getting (back) into gaming
There was a time that the average PC gamer was an avid player of Farmville, or Mafia Wars, or any number of other Facebook games. They spread like literal viruses, infecting users who accepted invites from their friends. These new users were encouraged to spread the game further. Ever since Facebook clamped down on those vectors (and casual gamers started flocking to mobile devices for their puzzle/farming fix), its gaming side has withered.
4K resolutions put consoles in the rear-view
PS4 and Xbox One looked pretty fly for their first year on shelves, boasting 1080p resolutions and the kind of ultra-clear textures that let you stop and read a street sign or poster in between gun fights (if that's your thing). For the first time in years, the visual differences between a game running on a high-end PC and a game running on a new console weren't all that appreciable to the average consumer.
Ubisoft abandons Uplay for PC distribution
Ok, so this one is mostly a wish on my part with some circumstantial evidence to back it up. But if Ubisoft was ever going to stop the mad bid for digital distribution/loyalty rewards/social networking/DRM that is Uplay, 2015 is the year to do it. Seriously, look at how its perception among avid gamers suffered last year between Watch Dogs disappointment, Assassin's Creed Unity glitches, and network problems keeping The Crew offline, then consider where it goes from here.
The second wave of Kickstarters crashes in
Last year was pretty scarce in terms of high-profile Kickstarters. You could say that's because people are more wary of the platform after some crushing disappointments, and you wouldn't be wrong. But there was another factor at play: so many of the old-school, feel-good creators that folks supported en masse in years past were already working on a Kickstarter project.
Space sims get even more massive
Elite: Dangerous is out, and people seem to love it (including us). Star Citizen is um. Well, you can play parts of it, which seem cool, and I can only imagine that more bits and pieces will be made playable throughout 2015. No Man's Sky is riding hype from Sony for its 2015 release, but it will be just as enigmatic and enticing on PC. And as we wait for more body awareness and input solutions for virtual reality, stuff like Oculus Rift is best suited to making you feel like a head floating in space.
ESPN gets a League of Legends beat
If you pay attention to eSports, you already know this, but if you don't, it's time to start: League of Legends' 2014 world championship finals were watched by 27 million people. That's 3.5 million more than watched the last game of the 2014 MLB World Series. Many of those viewers watched the match on online streaming service ESPN3 - which also aired Dota 2's The International 4 in July. That's right, eSports on ESPN.
Kentucky Route Zero's last episode ends human suffering
It wouldn't be a holistic look at the near future of PC gaming without an enthusiastic endorsement of some high-falutin game that relatively few people have played. In this case, I'll direct your attention to Kentucky Route Zero, an episodic point-n-click adventure in five parts. The first three released from January 2013 to May 2014, so I'm hopeful that we'll see the finale to the quietly poignant story in 2015.
