The games industry never stands still – it's an ever-changing world, with a constant jockeying to be at the forefront of technology, coding and gameplay. While 2009 won't see any earth-shattering announcements, what with the next-next-next-gen consoles still a fair way off, there will be a few technologies that have the potential to define this year. We thought we'd take a look at the key gaming technologies to watch in 2009.

3D Gaming

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Back in the mid 90s, 3D became the new 2D. And now 3D II: Son of 3D is set to become the next new 3D. You probably already know how much of a push 3D is getting in the movie industry, thanks to great new technology and concerted support from a number of studios, but it's also hitting the small(er) screen.The first place it's going to take off will be on the home PC, where the barrier to entry is a little lower. At Last Month's CES, Nvidia was showing off itswhich is a 3D solution (and available now for US $200) that eschews the polarised glasses of other systems. Instead, it uses powered active shutter glasses and a transmitter for the glasses, which results in a very convincing impression of depth. You can also adjust the level of depth on the fly.You'll need more than just the 3D Vision pack, however; you'll also need a display that can handle the tech – this means a display that can refresh at 120Hz and can be connected via dual link DVI or a DLP HDTV. You'll also need a pretty new GeForce GPU. (Check the list of supported displays and cards). Once you're set up, however, you can get straight down to the business of playing - hundreds of games will work with the system out of the box (with custom profiles optimised for each), including Left 4 Dead, WoW: Wrath of the Lich King, Mirror's Edge and Call of Duty: World at War. Gofor the full list.Of course, this isn't the only solution for PC - iZ3D also has 3D-ready LCDs, which use polarizing glasses and can be paired with ATI Radeon 3D cards - so it will be interesting to see how things develop over the year. Outside the realm of PC gaming, 3D continues to make headways in the realm of HDTV, with several of the biggest manufacturers, including Sony, Samsung, LG and Panasonic all pushing 3D hard with their latest sets. There are a handful of 3D-ready sets available now, but as 2009 progresses we'll see new models launch and the technology mature. We'll also hopefully see a standard established for 3D in the home. What this all means for games remains to be seen – will we be able to patch current games to support 3D? Will 3D come as standard in theof consoles?3D is going to make a splash in 2009, but not on the consoles. Nope, 3D this year will be all about 3D at the movies, on the PC and – to a lesser extent – on your TV.

Blu-Ray Super Disc

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Okay, so the current storage capacity of Blu-ray discs is nothing to sniff at, but the future for the format in 2009 is looking seriously rosy, thanks to Pioneer's new Super Disc Blu-ray technology, whichonto the one disc, each of which can hold 25GB, making for 400GB storage capacity total. The best news? The tech is compatible with current blu-ray players. The advantages of greater storage capacity are obvious enough – more 1080p content can be packed into film/TV releases, while if the technology is integrated into PS3 discs, game developers will have more room to move in terms of the size of their games. Final Fantasy XIII – we're looking at you.This may not have a huge impact on gaming in 2009, but it's definitely technology to keep an eye on.

Brain Computer Interfaces

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Who wouldn't want to be able to manipulate things with the power of their mind? Who wouldn't want to be able to lift an X-Wing out of a Dagobah swamp? Nobody, that's who. Sadly, unless midi-chlorian levels suddenly spike around the world, we're going to be taking baby steps into the world of affecting things with the power of the mind.What will 2009 bring in this realm? Well, hopefully Emotiv's Epoc brain computer interface headset thingie may finally come out. This piece of tech has been in development for a long time (you can check out IGN's coverage from... which wasn't the first time we covered it), and was originally due for release in late 2008, but ended up being held back. Why? From what we've heard – serious teething problems.On the surface it sounds great - the headset has a heap of sensors that measure the electrical activity of the brain and the movements of facial muscles, theoretically allowing you to translate thoughts and expressions into action on-screen. The system will ship with athat boils that down to basic abilities, such as levitating objects within the gameworld, but the official site also highlights real-time emoticons (i.e. a display that shows your live expression) and, erm, smile-based wheelchair control (). The Emotiv Epoc will retail for US $299.Honestly, this is one of those things that sounds way cooler than it's actually likely to be. Right now it all looks pretty clunky. We really hope they can pull it together, but we're skeptical. Still, it's something to watch in 2009.

OLED screens

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What the hell, man? Where are my OLED screens damn you?! In 2008 it was looking like they were just around the corner. I mean, at the start of last year, Sony released the first commercial model. Sure it was only an 11 inch screen. And sure it cost US $2,500, but the point was that the door had opened. Larger models would follow, the technology would mature and the price would come down. Well, where are they? Certainly not at 2009's CES. (There were a number ofbut no production models.)Even so, we still have our fingers crossed that 2009 will see more from OLED. Why? The tech kicks ass, that's why. OLED screens are super-thin, consume less power than competing technologies, have great colour reproduction, excellent viewing angles and great refresh rates. They also require fewer components to build, so once production ramps up and the technology matures, OLED screens could potentially be cheaper to manufacture than LCD.Without beating around the bush, 2009 may not be the year of OLED. Research will continue to be done, but the tech may remain the domain of small-screen devices for the foreseeable future. That said, we may well be playing games on an OLED laptop screen by the end of the year. And how about going with OLED for PSP2, Sony?

Wii MotionPlus

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Well, the Wii is the gaming success story of the last couple of years, but the actual promise of motion control really hasn't been fulfilled. There are numerous examples of great implementation, but the reality is that the Wiimote simply doesn't have the fine response that many were expecting. Wii MotionPlus aims to rectify that. The add-on essentially allows for one to one replication of movements, giving much greater precision to everything you do in-game. We still don't have a date for it, but we're thinking closer to the middle of the year than later.Of course, given Nintendo's success, other companies are looking to improve on their design. One is Sixense Entertainment, which has a system called TrueMotion coming for PC at the end of 2009 (but presumably with an eye to licensing it to console manufacturers) which it says delivers true one-to-one by tracking movement along six axes and measuring the exact position of the remote every ten milliseconds. The PC system will be backwards compatible with a number of titles.Our excitement for Wii MotionPlus is tempered somewhat by the reality of the market. Sure, the games in Wii Sports Resort will probably control superbly well, but no other game can assume that its entire audience will have the MotionPlus add-on, so will have to make the game compatible for 'vanilla' Wiimote controllers as well as MotionPlus. In gameplay terms that's going to cause some problems.