Hmmmm.... MS hasn't announced much lately... Sony put plans for Ps4 on the shelf(allegedly).... Nintendo hasn't announced much lately either... Sounds like a all in one console is coming!

Just kidding!

But the timing of all this is strange!

I'm all for a single format. A baseline format that manufacturers can then take away and develop units from. Some might might add additional USB ports or memory card slots. Others might provide a cut down, bare basic version for just playing games.

At the end of the day this should all be about the games and not about who's hardware is better.

@close second

You do realise that competition is the only thing that breeds a better product. If it wasn't for competition then we might still be playing our old nintendo familycom, or a bastardized Atari product.

Games today would not be as good as they are if the the consoles did not need to improve due o direct competition. Can you imaging that we would all be still playing the PS2 if MS did not take over for competition when Sega dropped out? Think of all those games you would not have been able to play.

When you only have one company...innovation becomes stagnant because they have no need to compete. We need more than one player in this business. 3 is perfect. Keeps everyone on their toes.

Are you saying there is no competition in the PC market?

I think what's needed is for the gaming industry to get together and agree on some baseline spec for a system then allow different manufacturers to deliver to those specs.

PC is not one format... think of Apple versus HP to start. Think that each PC is it's own console basically. Some video cards are better then others. Tthe large majority of the arguement will then change from which is the better graphics card or CPU to program directly for. You see specs on PC boxes that say what a system needs as a minimum. And for many people their system no longer stacks up. They have to buy new hardware just to play games these days compared to before.

or you could build your own and pick parts from allot of diff companies that make them and you still have competition (pc)

Indeed, but you can't update consoles. So if you want a universal console, you probably already have one, it's called the PC.

I like how people hark on the fact that the PC is the thing because you can just keep buying more and more parts to upgrade it and play on. And what are you really doing...? In the 5 ~ 6 years of an average console life I would have spent much more on my PC upgrading the memory, new graphics card (every year!) and getting that new internal bluray player. On and on and on... it is never ending with the PC. One of the biggest nickle and dime devices out there.