NeoTokyo, circa 1981

So last Saturday I trotted along to the local ark-sized multiplex cinema to see the biggest film in cinema history, Avatar. Not sure what all the fuss was about? Well, you're missing out. This is one of those films you shouldn't miss, like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Compared to the spectacle (excuse the pun) of watching it on the big screen through 3D glasses, watching it on a DVD will be pants. And as I was sitting there having my retinas scorched by this uber-awesome visage, I was thinking: this is the future of cinema.

See, as the standard of living and good times in general get better, we'll all get bigger televisions and better sound systems. And when you put it down to it, that's the main pull of movies right now, at the cinema. The movie industry is declining, and television will soon overtake it. Another point is that - in the same way that Great Expectations was published in magazines as a serial when it was first penned - soaps might become film-sized. I'm not saying that Coronation Street will be getting Best Actor at the Oscars in 20 years, I just mean that eventually shows like that will die out - as all products ultimately do - and television will become more cinematic.

The 3D experience - offering people an innovative, new and mind-blowing film - is what cinema has to fall back on, and it's the only card Hollywood holds over networks. But pretty soon that will comes into our homes - the 3D week on Channel Four was just a taster - and cinema will die out. It's sad, but it happens.

But the real thing that will revolutionise and eventually come to dominate entertainment in both the home and public places - video games. Sure, they've come from humble, teenage-niche beginnings; Mario jumping on platforms avoiding Donkey Kong, for instance, but they're becoming more and more immersive and more and more innovative. The concept is simple: don't just watch the story, live it. Fight your corner in 1945 Berlin or pilot an X-Wing down the main trench of the Death Star. The success of the Wii shows how video games aren't just for 11-30 year-old guys.

And where Hollywood is sinking the video game industry is swimming - last year video games manufacturers as well as Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft posted record profits. And although the industry is really still adolescant, there have been some geniusly constructed games so far. Take the Grand Theft Auto series, the games where you run amok in a fictional American city running your own crime empire. These games never fail to cause "outrage" amongst reactionary parents and clergy-esque polemicists, but an often-ignored fact about the games is that they are works of satire. True, it's black-hearted, incredibly dark satire, but satire nontheless. Alongside the sporadic and insane violence featured, there is some brilliant comedy. Take the radio broadcasts, for instance - when you drive a car, you can listen to pre-recorded radio shows, some talkshows and some rock stations or chartshows. The voice artists are hilarious; Vice City , the Scarface pisstake, features a neoconservative senator who thinks democracy means "being rich, and laughing at the poor - or being in government and laughing at the electorate". In the same programme, you hear the hellfire televangelist Pat Robertson lampoon shoot a nudist for offending his project to build a space-going, armour plated 400ft statue of himself.

In the last century we've had very few films as funny as that. And the main restriction on video games - the graphics - is improving with every new release. If you look at the Call of Duty franchise, the success is of a similar calibre. Starting out as essentially interactive versions of the movie Saving Private Ryan, the games have morphed into brilliantly absorbing action games. The latest two, the Modern Warfare series, are basically James Bond movies, only instead of Daniel Craig blowing up the desert base, it's you. Every action depends on your joystick - the fate of the world in your fingers. You don't just play through an infantilised level with cardboard-cut SS Commandos to shoot, you are the soldier. The way the controller reacts to your responses makes it feel like an extension of your hand.

On the other hand, there are even better games than CoD or GTA; for instance Lego Star Wars is absolutely genius. It transposes the true spirit of the original films (when you got down to it, A New Hope was Errol Flyn's Robin Hood with lasers) and synergises them with the gorgeously peaceful world of Lego - a name which for me, is synonymous with toys and fun. Surely, whilst World of Warcraft is the future of the fantasy genre, and war-games like Call of Duty the next step in historical action flicks, games like Mario and Lego Star Wars will replace kid's films?

I mean, why not teach them morals n' shit interactively - its how school works isn't it? There was a book I read when I was about ten - about a game that came with a 3D suit, and when you played the game you were actually fighting the minotaur or drinking the poisoned wine, or swashbuckling with vampiric demons. In the book, the suits came alive and the corporeal existence of the world as we know it was threatened by a rather camp-sounding villain called the "Gamesmaster", but the premise of the 3D suits might be the future of gaming. And the future of gaming is the future of entertainment. Remember the holodeck from Star Trek - that room where the crew went to chill in whatever environment they chose. Well, think of that, minus all the insane malfunctions it went through (like that time the whole ship turned into a tree or something).

With the burgeoning technology of augmented reality becoming manifest, it's only a matter of time before some bright spark combines all these gadjets and gizmos into the most awesome-est entertainment experience the world has ever seen. Imagine it: you're finishing a lager in your favourite pub (decor inspired by The Nag's Head, circa 1981), and you're suddenly bored. Nazi Communist laserthugs show up, and you chase them through the streets and sky-lanes of NeoTokyo in your CFX51 VoidFighter - then you think "pause", blink, and go and make a lovely cup of tea.

Ok so it probably won't be like that, and that sounds like the most appallingly bad game ever, but it's not so farfetched. Internet, 3D, augmented technology and video gaming are bound to hybridise one day and it will be very, very cool when it happens.