We all know that famous Star Wars line..."the circle is complete". Remember way back when, consoles were sub-par substitutes for PCs, ie Apple II, IBM, etc. Companies like Atari, and later the 1st big three jumped at the chance to make $$ off users of cheaper consoles as users wanted to pay less.
Now that the consoles are such powerhouses, I believe that the future may indeed hold a circle is complete notion-that is, as consoles near equal status to everyday PCs, multi-core, high RAM, exteme grafx.
In addition, I know everybody knows about this in some respect but thinlk about this: we are currently approaching the limits of Moore's Law in console/PC chips. Nanotechnology will play a role in this circle's last segmant--I guarantee it.