I Agree with 2 and 4. 3 is debatable and the less are meh. Half the people's comments in this thread made me lol.

I will have to disagree with 1, 4, and 5 as well. Certainly blu-ray should become standard next generation (if we haven't already moved on to something else), but it has been proven again and again that it's not necessary right now. Especially not for the Wii

I agree with your last sentence as regards expense, although there are two mitigating factors Sony couldn't foresee.  First, the yen is 25% stronger vs the dollar than it has been within the last ..I dunno, decade almost.  25% multiplied the PS3's cost comes out to more than $100.  Conclusion: take away the economic factor of the yen and the components are not "too expensive" anymore, b/c PS3 would cost over $100 less and Sony could drop to $299.  Second, the recession is shifting demand to consoles priced less in absolute terms.  So those must be considered along with Sony's missteps.

The charitable interpretation of the article would be that some new version of 360 should have blu-ray, or that Live/VC should be as open as the PSN, starting now or in the future.  I mean, if the article is saying that Wii should have launched with blu-ray, that's obviously laughable, but I do think that going forward, some of the features would make sense for one or both of Sony's competitors.

I'd like little big planet. Sony's futureproof thing they have going now is ridiculous.

But dropping to 299 isn't enough.  I think the Wii is too expensive for a mass market, but Wii Sports is making the price seem reasonable for most consumers. $199 is a good price for a console, or $250 with a AAA bundled game.

It's great that Sony's running a marathon.

Unfortunately, today's event is the 1600 meter.

I won't comment on this one because I'm not sure what the heck it means. The downloadable network that gets Flower wins?

I suppose that'd be a nice bonus, sure, but I'm not too fussed at its exclusion.

No. For starters, the author is claiming that people are buying the console to watch movies, not to play games, which is something that won't benefit Nintendo or Microsoft at all. Additionally, it ignores the fact that adding a Blu-Ray drive will jack up costs while negating any real benefit, as all three consoles will offer the same lure. Finally, it assumes that Blu-Ray really is the future, which remains to be seen.

Is there any proof that people need their game console to be a media hub? Sony bet the farm on "yes," Microsoft waged a few hundred million on "possibly," and Nintendo went with "no." Note how the three consoles are positioned in terms of marketshare.

Again, no objections here, seeing as how hard-drives are relatively cheap now. Still, mandatory installs annoy me.

Long story short, it seems like Sony's abandoning their seige, and trying the Trojan Horse method.

I know Sony didn't write this.

1. Build a Future-Proof Console

All that this will do would be to put your product into a price range that most consumers will not buy it. In the PS3's case, it still hasn't done much to distance itself from the 360 even though it is "futureproof". In any case, it is unlikely that the PS3 will last longer than the 360 and Wii.

2. Make a Less Restricted Downloadable Game Market

The Wii's Virtual Console and WiiWare are great. The one complaint is storage, which I will get to later.

3. Make Rechargeable Batteries the Standard

Rechargeable AAs are the way to go in my opinion. Proprietary batteries are not necessary.

4. Implement Blu-ray

For this generation, I think BluRay was a burden that made PS3s too expensive. For next generation, it would probably be in Microsoft's interests to include BluRay.

5. Make a More Media Friendly Console

A video game console does not need to be a media center. Nintendo has proved this. The Wii doesn't even play DVDs, and I don't need it to play them either. I see Nintendo using a proprietary format again next generation.

6. Put a Hard Drive in Every Console

I agree, but I don't want to be installing my games either. The hard drive needs to be big enough for my downloadable games, but small enough that developers are not tempted to use it for disc based games. It would be good if the Wii had more internal flash memory than half a gig, but I think the sweet spot is probably 2 to 10 gigs.

I read no.1 and realised that the entire article is fail.

Future proof? Just like laptops/PC computers and any other technology on the planet, the PS3 became redundant 1 month after it left Sony R&D. If it were future proof, Sony would not be working on the PS4 as we speak.

Well, you could just hook up an array of PS3 to make it... faster.

What's wrong with buying rechargeable batteries?
It's much cheaper to replace just the batteries than the whole unit, no?