This September, the new GTA game comes out. I am vey excited about this.

Towards the end of the year (in time for Christmas), the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are expected to launch.

They will be expensive (at least, more expensive than I can really justify, given how much less time I have for playing games these days). And presumably, they will have exclusives for all of the AAA titles within the next year or so.

Meanwhile, Lovefilm have announced that they are going to stop renting games. So if I want to play a new game, I'll have to pay £50-60+ to buy a copy— which again, is something I don't do very often.

So, after GTA V, it's looking like my computer gaming days are going to be effectively over. In a few years time, my son (currently 4) will be old enough to get involved with what will probably be the 9th or 10th generation of consoles (assuming that there is still a games industry like the one we have today by that point — which isn't an assumption I would personally put money on), and I've got little doubt that I will a) be encouraging Father Christmas to bring one and b) want to play on it myself. But I know it won't be the same.

But maybe it's not all bad.

For all the hours of fun I have had playing games like Mass Effect 3, Skyrim, various Call of Duties, and other franchises, movie spin offs and so on, I can only think of two games which have really blown me away in the years of my PlayStation 3; Journey and Portal. Neither of which were £50+ "triple-A" titles, but 'experimental' games, both priced at less than £10. Both used the medium of video games to do something completely different with the way they told a story.

Meanwhile, mobile platforms have moved forwards at such a pace that not only has an entire business emerged in less time than a new generation of 'proper' consoles (albeit heavily focused on “casual” gaming so far), but it seems perfectly feasible to me that the next big experiments with storytelling through games will be coming to portable touch-screen devices, rather than to 'traditional' consoles.

So maybe, without the next wave of first person shooters (which don't translate too well to an iPhone or iPad environment), I'll be more invested in looking for quality mobile games — the kind that leave you wanting to find out what happens next (as opposed to just wanting to clear the next short level).

Or maybe I'll just be telling my son in a few years that 'in my day, we played proper games'…