Well, by "video-games industry" I mean the HD console manufacturers. 

Let's firstly think about the events that have occurred this generation; development costs for the HD consoles have been high resulting in more expensive games, and the technology was also expensive meaning that the hardware was generally more expensive as well. Meanwhile, Nintendo hung back a little and.. well we know how that turned out in the end.

The point is that the HD console manufacturers have chosen their path and they have to continue down that route- power and high performance hardware. Their fans will be disgusted if they don't make a large hardware jump for the next generation. This means that they'll be stuck with even higher costs for development and manufacturing than they had this generation. Nintendo can hang back a little again; their next generation "Wii" doesn't have to compete with these other consoles in terms of hardware specs. They don't even have to make a console more powerful than the PS3. This technology will be super cheap when generation 8 arrives.

This was just an observation that I made, and it might have been mentioned before. Just wondered if I was misunderstanding something, or that the development of HD consoles is going to end in disaster. 

I mean this is why Sony Said PS3 is going to last 10 years... Now I don't know if I believe that. But I'd think development costs would be atleast part of the reason for saying that. Like the wii if sony continues to support the ps3 and it sells software, then the devs will most likely create games for it, because it sells more for a lower dev cost.

Now if microsoft releases a new console, then I dunno. I'm confused at what I'm saying, but I'm trying to say something, if it's wrong, then that's fine. It was just hard to put in words for me, what I thought.

Software wise no.

Profit wise yes

Hardware wise no, this is the best generation in that respect.

The thing you forget is Sony and Microsoft position their consoles for what they want to benefit their company as a whole. Sony will always create a Playstation that goes hand in hand with what Sony as a whole plans to do - HD / 3D TV's, Blu-Ray Players, Movie Downloads, Music streaming etc. I think they royally ****ed up the financials for the PS3 for whatever reason but being forced to push technology benefits Sony's strategy as a whole.

Microsoft is similiar but just about getting the PC in the living room and such like.

The real worry is for developers, where the 'cost of entry' into development could be yet even higher. On the other hand there might be more oportunities for smaller studios as the downloadable services become more mainstream *shrug*.