To be a smart ass about the next generation, design a pinball where you plunge the ball, and quickly look at the coin door to see how many tickets fly out. That's a winner for kids today. Or even better for the 20 somethings, is plunge the ball and quickly look at the backbox to take a Kardash selfie and post it on fb or instagram or whatever.
You might be shocked when you discover how many middle aged men in our hobby are actually more addicted to making inane facebook postings than any of the twenty somethings.
As for pinball evolution, I'd be content with built in wifi connectivity in the short term.
The market leader at the time, B/W were promoting
www.wms.com website on their displays all the way back in 1995 as the tech just didn't exist at the time to go beyond that.
20 years later and the current market leader hasn't taken it any further.
Code update 1.28 for KISS is now available. Do you wish to proceed? Press left flipper button for yes, right flipper button for no.
Now saving high scores and settings to cloud.
Connecting to sternpinball.com servers.......downloading
