14 DAY TRIAL // 2011 is pretty much here and it's the first year of another decade of gaming, when we are likely to see new home and portable consoles from the major manufacturers and maybe even some new companies and when hopeful new video game franchises appear as others will fade out.
But we don't need to look far into the future to see change happening.
In less than two months from now players will be able to get their hands on the Nintendo 3DS handheld, which is supposed to offer gamers the ability to play full three dimensional video games on the go without using any special unwieldy glasses.
The device will initially be available on the Japanese market on February 26, 2011 with the price point hovering about the equivalent of 300 dollars.
The handheld is a test in more ways than one, for both Nintendo and the wider industry.
On one hand, it will tell the market and the industry whether 3D gaming, which on home consoles has been hampered by big prices for television sets and by glasses, can be successful in the long term.
On the other, it will show us whether mobile gaming still has a place for dedicated devices like it and the PlayStation Portable from Sony or whether the future is in the hands of smartphones, like Android-powered devices or the iPhone line from Apple.
On the home console front, it's unlikely that we will see any major moves, like a redesign of the major players or the launch of the Kinect and the Move, but there's also room for some surprises, although if anything gets announced at E3 2011, the product will probably arrive in 2012.
The wild card here is again Nintendo, a company that seems to be losing sales for the Wii now that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are motion capable as well, which is widely expected to announce something that will revitalize sales, most probably an upgrade to High Definition graphics and more storage space.