I hope there will be a single system eventually in the vein of DVD so it isn't just produced and monopolised by one company. A single cheap movie format encourages creativity by little indie film makers who know they can film a movie on a tiny budget and burn region 0 DVDs for next to nothing that will work on any DVD player in the world. I'd really love to see that for games. No region locks and an open format where anyone can develop and burn their own games for next to nothing with no need to worry about finding a big publisher. I admit I can't see it happening though, it's always going to be monopolised by a few key players.

 Beat me to it, I remember seeing this also... I can't remember where but look at sales on the HD console; they aren't as near to close to as many want them to be but they aren't generating shit in terms of revenue. How could any company look at GTA sales and Halo sales and say "well guys, were gunna give up our blockbuster so we can copy the Wii because it makes abit more money in this small timeframe we choose to only observe." Of course we can see a new type of console being out for awhile (Wii) that doesn't mean HD consoles are dead unless the console companies are as close minded as the person writing articles about "Console Extinction."

You raise a valid enough point, Ssyn, but I was pointing out the fact that console gaming was undergoing a revival between 1983 and 1987, and PC gaming journalists were responding the same way they've responded to the shifts in the industry caused by the DS and Wii. The big difference here is that the old face of consoles hasn't been completely obliterated the way it had been when the NES showed up on the scene.

Had the Wii and DS not come along, we would likely have seen the industry collapse around about... oh, 2010 or 2011. As I'm sure you're aware, budgets for games have been rising too fast to match up with profits. The industry giants would have become trapped in an inescapable cycle and led to their own demise from the sheer unprofitability of releasing a new blockbuster hit game. But again, that wouldn't necessarily have happened early on in this generation; it would have taken until around the end of it.

I personally hope that the Wii and DS emerging will get developers to reconsider and perhaps switch to episodic content instead which focuses on giving brief but valued gameplay instead of long, overwhelming titles that cater to small demographics. Such can be done effectively even on the 360 and PS3, and for far less than the megalithic games we see released nowadays.

Is he completely blind....

{points toward wii sales figures}

No, there is something to his argument, actually, darthdevidem01, but it's just as short-sighted as pointing to sales as a lone indicator of progress. He pointed out the very valid argument that actual profits from the sale of console games has been downward-trending as game budgets get bigger; that's just a given if you have no way to raise the number of buyers significantly (and why pointing at sales figures alone is meaningless; profits are what matter in the end). He falls short in his argument primarily due to not taking into account the re-emerging market of episodic (ie. short-but-intense) gaming. Under his analysis, console gaming is trapped in the bigger-budget-smaller-audience model, which isn't true thanks to episodic games.

The biggest draw of consoles is the ease-of-use; no driver issues, current games are guaranteed to work on the current generation of machines, etc. Until PC's become as easy to upgrade/maintain/configure as consoles, there will be a market for consoles.

Console Gaming will never die, the market is bigger than ever

i think that in the next generation console market will start to shrink and handheld market will increase becoming main market for video games.

3DO tried going this route, but it didn't work.  That's not to say that 3DO's implementation wasn't flawed, but product differentiation is very import right now in the console market.

I hope not, i barely ever play handhelds, unless im travelling a long way (like on a plane), Besides teh death of home consoles is more likely to benefit PC gaming as many games are on PS3/360 and PC, the Wii will also increase the home console market massively.