Take a hard look at this for a moment and stop the quibbles. As I understand it, it will keep growing quickly towards 5 billion around 2025.

If we specify Fast Paced FPS (FPFPS) as some quake, unreal, painkiller, or warsow like game played with keyboard and mouse, what potential does the future hold?

Given the expansion of the market, is it possible to imagine some future scenario where an FPFPS will capture some millions of online gamers?

Once upon a time it was possible to imagine Quake Live catching fire. That it would spread like Minecraft or Fred. Sadly, this is no longer possible. And in hindsight this thought was possibly stupid.

What does Painkiller, Warsow and Quake Live lack to capture a huge mass of people? Is this lack inherent to FPFPS as we know and love them, or can they be overcome? Again, no quibbles!

So, what does the future hold? Is there a place for FPFPS as we build momentum towards 2012 and 2025? What would it have to look like, what kind of numbers are we looking at?

-------------- From what I can tell with my shady stats

The closest we get atm for a FPFPS, is Team Fortress 2, topping steam with around 70k players online simultaneously.

In comparison, steam lists CS with 50k, with an additional 50k in CS: Source. However this, which seems more accurate, lists CS alone with 180k players.

If we add up the three most popular FPS games 180+50+70 we get 300k. SC2 seems to have around 500k "on battle.net" when i log in. Doesn't seem to be an impossible difference here, in terms of popularity, from SC2 to FPS to FPFPS.

-------------- Edited from reading comments

The first comment already strikes at an essential point; Anonymous says, "[it] really depends on what kind of input/controllers the next generation of consoles and/or tablets will have." What is the best we can hope for on a console? Do any of them have the requisite inputsensitivity to guide even a compromised FPFPS?

In addition, T1E pointed out that "people on the internet = ios, android, netbook, notebook, console, tv, fridge, ... , pc" This is very true. The stats point the way:

"The number of mobile subscribers will increase by 85 percent each year for 3G, WiMAX and other higher-speed data networking technologies. There were 257 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2009. There will be 2.5 billion by 2014."

One might wonder then, how fast will the old setup grow? Will it die?

A subquestion; if the old setup is stagnating, and typical small-scale mobile devices seem impossible for any FPFPS, it would be interesting to know how fast the intermediate devices are growing too - the next-gen consoles, large tablets, uh, (notebooks?).. and whether these can support a reasonable FPFPS.