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Charles, you're absolutely right about chess outlasting us, but the *concept* of a 'next chess' is fascinating, precisely because it cannot/will not occur. Is there a game sufficiently close to FIDE that chessplayers will play it? FRC/960, bughouse, blitz, shogi, Xiang Qi, all these get played by serious chessplayers. Is there a game that we could add to those? More than one game? Note that what you've got for 'different' games are: chess; chess; chess; Japanese chess; Chinese chess. There is one noticeable trend here. The first 3 games are the same game. The next 2 pose hope that 'the next chess' won't be something like this: Set up all pieces except queens. The black player gets his choice of queen, chancellor[minister], or archbishop. White then picks one of the remaining two. I believe this would give black a slight edge in games won. It's practically chess, only 1 piece different, and allows a bit of handicapping, too. [Heh, my guess is Betza did this already.] But what else is there that is chess, but different? That's the question I'm playing with, Charles. The 'next chess' bit is just an extreme way of asking the question. 

A related question: what is the 'half-life' of a chess game? In other words, how long before half of the various forms of chess played in the world get a significant rules change, new piece, different board... ?