Do you think Nintendo and other manufacturers need to look ahead to independent development in a wider perspective?

All companies know in one way or another, that the future of gaming is in the hands of the people. UGC was a way of trying to control that, and own everything. But there seems a growing capability for more people to develop their games is arising, and what if the next market leader will be the one that gives independent developers the most freedom?

If you look at Wiiware, PSN and XBLA the output is very selective. And that's despite the fact that it's much easier to get a game released online. It's highly dictatorial. Will a new Sega, and eventually new Sony come out with a proposal that opens the possibilities for independent developers to do almost anything they'd like?

I think we're already seeing a version of this with the iPhone. In my opinion, if Nintendo and co.(Sony/Microsoft) don't consider expanding their indie footing considerably we'll likely see history repeating itself.

What are you saying Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft should be doing that they are not currently doing?

UGC failed, people real good content, no small developer is capable of such a thing, and if they do theyll get hired by a good company any sec

Open design platform. Yes eventually.

UGC has never failed. It's success is massive on PC side, the reason why it succeeds on the PC side is because of it's open environment. If a UGC game comes out say Half Life 1 & 2. It is assumed that Valve doesn't have to do the entire support load. What I mean by support load is community collective sites that allow people to share. An example would be
http://www.l4dmaps.com/
http://www.moddb.com/games/half-life/mods
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/default.aspx (UGC UI for WoW)
http://www.fr2db.fr/ (freerider tracks for a smaller game, small developer too)

I could go on for a long time showing UGC. Just having a UGC editor doesn't mean success. It's all about supporting the community of UGC. Something that as the OP has mentioned that the dictorial nature of console does not nurture such an environment.

Console will eventfully be open platform design, or more specifically console makers will include a sandbox environment to allow outside development while keeping licensed material safe.

... 4th party??? Ok. That's a new one. Why is it called 4th party? What's wrong with calling it 3rd?

It's sounds sexy...

And there is someone outhere who bought WoW or Half Life for the UGC?

i like the idea of indie developers being called 4th party...ima call them 4th party.

You can't make up your own words and expect people to know what they mean. There's no such thing as fourth party as far as I know. The first, second, and third party system is based loosely on first, second, and third person narration from books. There's no 4th person perspective. Users aren't even developers, really. They're more analogous to modders, really.

what is 4th party? Games from extra terrestrials?