10 Crucial Improvements The Gaming Industry Must Make In 2015

7. Intensify The Console Wars

The console wars of old were easily the best thing to happen to the generations that grew up entrenched in their cyber warfare-like exclusivity deals and promotional giveaways. There's nothing as compelling as good, healthy competition, and you need only look to last year's E3 press conference where Sony exec Jack Tretton single-handedly delivered an entire console generation-winning blow to Microsoft to see how much of a fire it lit under their X-embossed derrieres. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ-To7WJyWs Games With Gold was back on the Xbox dashboard, the monthly giveaway that offers genuinely brilliant full retail products at a far discounted prices, alongside a smattering of titles for free - something that Playstation's Store would later attempt to match across the year, the two of them wavering when it came to PS4 and Xbox One offerings, but delivering on invaluable PS3 and 360 titles throughout. When the two titans of the industry are battling out for supremacy, the only people who really win are the gamers, and with the new consoles themselves being so incredibly similar in terms of graphical output and processing power (especially to your average consumer), it's over to the PR teams to tempt you to either side thanks to resurrecting exclusivity contracts or offering something the competition literally cannot do. For all the hoopla Tomb Raider signing to Xbox created, it's a step in the right direction for corralling dedicated fans behind either console - something that will breed better healthy competition for developers going forward, as their titles aren't just representing a franchise, but a system too. If there's one thing easily agreed upon throughout 2014, it's that both developers and publishers have gotten lazy, and that needs to change as soon as possible.