[QUOTE]Gerhard Florin, Executive Vice President and General Manager International Publishing for Electronic Arts, recently told the BBC that incompatible consoles make life harder for developers and consumers and that he can see a day when set-top boxes replace the PS3, Wii and Xbox 360.
"I am not sure how long we will have dedicated consoles - but we could be talking up to 15 years," Mr Florin added.
He predicted that server-based games streamed to PCs or set-top boxes, would become increasingly important.
"You don't need an Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii - the consumer won't even realise the platform it is being played on."
Set-top boxes are becoming increasingly more powerful as they include technology to deal with High Definition TV streams and access to the internet.
Game consultant Nick Parker agrees that consoles are destined to die out, replaced intstead with one piece of hardware that has different operating systems or channels from companies like Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony.
Personally, I don't see this happening anytime soon. Steam has certainly opened the door to the concept of digital distribution, but people still aren't quite ready to cut the leash to their hardware.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://kotaku.com/gaming/industry/ea-forecasts-the-death-of-dedicated-consoles-312802.php[/url]
It makes sense, reinventing the wheel every few years and possably havign to spend billions to rebuild a brand the only problem I can foresee is every 8 years 3-6 competitors try and fight for the next decades main format,I think we have another 10 years worth of "consoles" as they are today.