The well known gaming site IGN has made an attempt to forecast the development of game consoles and makes a prediction how will the technology evolve to the year 2010. The year 2010 however is only 2,5 years away, and if you look at the life span of Sony PlayStation 2, one would expect that PlayStation 3 would be just about to reach it’s prime. Nintendo is perhaps the strongest candidate to release a new console, an upgraded version of the under powered Wii. Microsoft most likely has a shorter life span for Xbox 360 than Sony has, and they will keep on trying to trip Sony by releasing the next Xbox by 2010..12. According to IGN, the technical improvements are quite bland. HD graphics will become more popular, online distribution may partially replace discs and biggest leaps in visual candy is predicted to be in the physics modelling.

The combination of these various elements will likely be future-consoles rather akin to what is available now, simply more powerful and feature rich. Physics, in our estimation, will be the greatest graphical improvement leveraged by the next round of consoles, though software lighting effects like HDR, currently available only to high-end PC gamers, will also make an impact. The true avenue for exciting new capabilities in the next generation, we believe, will be the possibilities provided by digital distribution and IPTV. The gaming consoles of today have already established their utility in this regard, and as the paradigm develops in the coming years, it’s likely few other hardware platforms will be able to match their accessibility and installation base.

Source: IGN