It's a curly question. And an important one. And one that's been asked, with VentureBeat polling the industry to find out just what it thinks will be kind of a big deal in the future.
The answer? An overwhelming 66% of respondents to the survey's questions (which looks to be many of the industry's big guns) feel that microtransactions "would impact the game industry most" over the next five years. How...ominous. Bringing up the rear was user-generated content, advertising and voice-recognition, in that order.
Developers were also asked what their favourite platform would be in five years time, as well as which platform had the most potential. In both cases, the most popular answer came back as the iPhone. Equally ominous.
Survey: iPhone has biggest potential for games [VentureBeat]