8 Terrifying Facts & Predictions About The Future Of Gaming

8. Fact: Lootboxes Are Dying, But Recurrent Spending Isn't Going Anywhere

Has the problem this generation been with loot boxes, or microtransactions? The gambling-adjacent mentality, or the devaluing of what it means to purchase a video game?

It's something for the comments to debate out, but the industry certainly isn't going to start removing recurrent spending methods, and in fact, we're already seeing a more "palatable" approach to monetising the consumer on top of that retail price point - that of reducing randomised elements, but keeping in-game storefronts.

Contrast the "online gambling casino" feel of Battlefront 2's launch day status to something like Devil May Cry 5, where you can pay to resurrect your character upon death. Both are pretty scummy being you've already paid your "entry fee" (the price of the game itself), but the latter doesn't have randomisation, and as such, has seldom been dragged through the muck whatsoever.

Now, it's worth addressing that throwing money at a random number generator makes an EXORBITANT amount of coin. Activision brought home $4 billion dollars of microtransaction revenue across 2017, and though that's resulted in both them and EA existing on their own islands today, that amount of money won't go unnoticed.

Lawsuits levied EAs way for their handling of Battlefront 2 helped put a stop to the worst of this stuff, but you can all but say goodbye to buying a full game in one go.