he's stupid

The problem is, there are major economic incentives against what he is saying.

1) Convergence, or, one device to rule them all.  History has shown time and time again that for consumer electronics, we do not want one device that does everything.  Sure, some people will and thus there will always be a niche for those devices, but they have never been something the populace wants.  We already have the be-all end-all of convergence; the limit of convergence technology is the computer.

 And if we've learned anything about computers (or other general-purpose devices) it is that you cannot control distribution with them.  The more your device is billed to do everything, the more people will want to get around the limits you impose on them.  Take the PSP - a device billed to do everything, and people don't buy games.  Or UMD.  Or pretty much any part of the ecosystem Sony set up.  Thats because when you are selling a device that is billed as being able to do anything, and then you artificially stop people from doing things, you destroy consumer confidence and lead them to alternative paths.  Then when you take a just-as-easily cracked device like the DS, which is only billed as a gaming machine, you still get the piracy -- but you also sell software and cases and pretty much every part of the ecosystem.

This pattern can be seen time and time again in consumer electronics.  Jailbreaking iPhones and iPods is a booming business in and of itself - while people happily shell out $3 for ringtones on lesser phones.  It's human nature; the more you *think* you can do, the more you *want* to do -- despite whether or not others want you to do it.

And these are just economic incentives against convergence.  This doesn't even get into more features necessitating more size (which consumers don't like) or increasing cost (which consumers don't like) or consumers asking why their movie player also plays games when they don't have any desire to game.

Don't get me wrong - there is now and always will be a market for convergence devices.  That market is NOT the mass market.  This has been shown to us time and time again.

2) The 'Dumb Terminal' argument (which the author mistakingly calls 'cloud computing,' which is slightly different).  This is the argument that all you really need is a net connection, and everything else can be streamed to you over a network.  This came up all the time right after the days of the mainframe computer, where people would connect to a mainframe computer via a terminal which was basically a monitor and a keyboard.  As microcomputers got big, it was constantly assumed that computing would eventually return to the mainframe model, as it is easier to support one complex computer (or cluster, or whatever).  So you could have all your data on the central model, and pull it up on demand, and your personal computer would be cheap because it would basically be a connection to this other computer.

Once again, history has shown us that this is not acceptable to the masses. EVERYBODY does something on computers that they would not want to put in control of a third party, even if it would probably be safer -- whether thats illegitimate file sharing, or just emailing personal information to a family member.  It may be safer in the hands of someone devoted to keeping it safe, but that doesn't remove the psychological reaction to giving your sensitive data to someone you don't know.

This gets even worse when it comes to media.  We are so used to owning our media, and doing whatever we want with it.  In a digital world, this means ripping it to our hard drive, putting it on our iPods, putting it on Youtube, watching it on our computers, or whatever.  Rental systems are one thing, but when we think about what we 'own', we want to 'have' it.  We don't want it streamed to us over the internet, or have anyone tell us when, how, or why we can use it.  People do not want devices that try to limit this, and you can be damn sure that a centralized solution like that would not let me use DeCSS or AnyDVD to rip my DVDs (all legally purchased, thank you very much) or Blu-Rays (still not rip-able enough for me to buy, but eventually...). 

 This point meshes with #1... if I am buying computing, I want to compute regardless of what it is... but you can be damn sure a content distributor is not going to allow me to get content from other channels if it is up to them.

 Sorry for the length, I expect many "TL/DR" to follow this... but don't think that this guy's argument holds any weight.  We've been hearing it for decades, and its no truer now than it was then.

^^I can think of a least 10 times in the last year that everyone says the Internet will supercede personal computers. Its bullshit. Why would you want to rely on other for your computing power (and pay a monthly fee to them to do it) when you can just pay a one-time price and do all the computing more efficiently on your own PC? Sheesh, do these guys REALLY have that short of a memory they can't remember the mainframe crash in the late '80's?

@alpha_dk: Actually, in the special case of gaming, the arguments against dumb terminals are even stronger than you portrayed them. Technical limitations abound when you try to stream something as interactive as a game.

No matter whether people want to or not, the speed of light will not increase to accomodate a model where your game is being run in a computer which is thousands of kilometers away, while maintaining the desired property of fast response time. It can work for poker and chess games, but anything as interactive as most of the games which are played on consoles just can't work well on such a model.

 I agree, I just didn't want to make my post any longer than it already was, and was trying to keep it as non-specific to gaming as I could because the article was about convergence devices.  Thank you for bringing it up, though

 I'm thinking of a person who's first name starts with an M and last name starts with a P. Any guesses?

this was on engadget jsut a bit ago, so i'll just repost my comment from there:

No need to worry about it. Consoles will never disappear entirely, because no matter how good computers get, they offer too much variance in design and capabilities to be able to design a game that takes advantage of the computer you're using fully.
In order to have a complete experience of a video game, it has to be designed for a console with a specific set of standards in both spec and controls. When I buy a video game, I know that it will be compatible with the console I bought it for, and I know it will play the same way that everybody else's game plays.

Priceless, well spotted...