The Next "The Next Generation" of Consoles

As the Xbox 360 rapidly approaches the five year lifespan that most consoles traditionally adhere to, I frequently find myself wondering what the new offerings from Microsoft and Sony will bring to the table. In the current marketplace, graphical horsepower and raw performance matter a lot less than they did in the era before the Wii re-wrote the rules on what it took to be successful in the console world. The one area in which consoles could stand to see some improvement is in their ability to foster and maintain online communities. The 360 has admittedly done a much better job thus far than Sony and Nintendo, but moving forward the abilty to stay connected and find and make friends to play with is only going to need to improve.

Developers have certainly answered the call of the gaming public when it comes to having a social experience while gaming. The number of big AAA titles that feature cooperative play is at an all-time high. The only thing better than playing Gears of War 2's impressive single player campaign is playing it with a friend and experiencing all the action together. It really amplifies the experience when you can share it with someone in real-time and then re-live your exploits later when you go out to lunch or just hang out. Now that games are placing an emphasis on social interaction it would be nice to see console makers begin to place a strategic focus into their console design that reinforces this trend.

It would be interesting to see a console company take some cues from Social Media and add some "Twitter" like service to their dashboards or homescreens. A location based feature would also be a pretty cool thing to have the option to turn on or off that would actively try and match you with people in the same City, Town, or State. Personal touches like these might alleviate a lot of the bad behavior that one usually encounters in a more anonymous play session and put more of an emphasis on making friends. In the age of cell-phones and text messaging people are increasingly accustomed to being "plugged-in" and accessible to their friends and family at anytime anywhere. It seems like a logical step forward for this to expand into gaming moving forward as the medium continues to grow and adapt with current technological trends.