The last topic I made was more about if Nintendo should exit hardware and create a channel available on every piece of equipment capable of playing games instead. I said Nintendo but I mainly think games should be distributed through channels and played on gaming consoles made by any company just like DVDs are played on a DVD player made by different companies. 

Like you would subscribe to the MS/Sony/Nintendo channel where you could have access to all of their games and demos and exclusive stuff. As for the third party games they would be available through any channels.

Why do I think the industry should go this way?

- You would be able to buy the console you want from any company it doesn't matter which, you would have access to any games as long as you subscribe. 

- Third party games would all look and perform the same. One thing they could do though is scale down the games depending how powerful your console is just like PCs do but on a console. Like there are tvs for any budgets, there would be a console for any budgets but the more expensives would allow better graphics.

- If one company wants to release some exotic controller nothing can stop them from doing so. All they would need to do is advertise the games like Ninty did with Wii Fit and the balance board. You could also buy controllers from the company you want.

- Devs wouldn't spend their time porting games to different hardware. 

- Less devs would go bankrupt because they developped their games on a console that sold poorly. Devs should sell their games to gamers, not to specific console owners.

I hope devs will get the chance to develop a game once instead of having to port them to multiple hardware and still cater to the majority of gamers. Ninty, MS and Sony create incredible games but exclusivity to one console is lame. This model is old and should dissapear altogether. When a big DVD releases, anyone with a DVD player can go and buy it, it doesn't matter what company builds the dvd player... gaming should go this way.

Do you think we should continue with specific hardware and having bad ports all around and not be able to play exclusives from other consoles? 

Money
Drops mic and leaves/

Lol you think they make a lot of money through hardware? Ask MS if they prefer 70million Live subscribers of 70 millions 360s sold? One cost them an arm and leg while the other gets them almost a bilion a year... money would be a good reason to drop hardware imo.

One: you said on channel so why would Xbox make all money from subscribe.

two: money is in the controllers and stuff like kinect.

You basically telling someone is make less money for someone else to make more.

You are basically describing pc gaming.
Standardized game boxes have been done before, MSX, CD-I, 3DO.

You can get pc gaming in console form too, Alienware X-51


What all these have in common as opposed to exclusive hardware is cost of entry for the consumer.
Specialized mass produced hardware, sold initially at a loss, will always beat licensed hardware that needs to be sold at a profit. Look at the difference in prices between standalone blu-ray players and the ps3 when the ps3 came out. The ps3 was expensive, yet standalone blu-ray players were $800 or more at the time.

Convenience is another big factor. 1 integrated online store and no worries about compatibility issues.

I am curious to see what Valve is working on. A Steambox sounds good, but can it compete with consoles. The Alienware X-51 certainly didn't catch on.

I also said that is one company wants to create controllers nothing would prevent them from doing so.

70m 360s
70m PS3s
90m Wiis

230m players  would be the userbase for any company that wats to sell games and/or peripherals. Plus subscription. A console like the PS3 that sold 500+ had a slow start and they lost money on every consoles sold. Now they wouldn't lose any money on consoles, instead they would rank in money from subscribers since that would be the only way they could play. 50$/year would take 10 years for a gamer to pay the equivalent of a 500$ console at launch. But that 50$ would directly go to Sony instead of them losing money for every console sold.

Without the initially loss leading xbox360 which gave MS their closed eco system they wouldn't have all those live subscribers.
The paid live for windows service got cancelled as no pc gamer wanted to pay for it.

Yea I heard about what Valve is doing and I hope it works out well. My idea is more about a console (even though I think it will happen but through services more than through a unified console) that could just play console games. I think, with this, dvd players will also dissapear and the console you'll get in your living room will just be something that streams all your services if it's not the tv that'll do it.

PCs are not convenient in a living room. Some might like it or find a way to make it available but consoles do it better in the living room than PCs.

To be fair, those numbers are probably not cumulative. Many consumer own more than one system.

It's a beautiful dream -- and it would end so many of these pointless and obnoxious console wars -- but it won't happen anytime soon.

But you gotta remove a subscription fee from the equation. That's just a non-starter.

Yes that is true... but it doesn't mean it has to go on like this. I think I read somewhere that MS was going to rename XBL to just Xbox and have it available on all MS devices, Android and iOS. This already is a sign. No need to buy a specific hardware to play Xbox, this is brilliant imo and both Ninty and Sony should listen.