by Casey Lynch

If we're to entertain Mayan pop-scientist notions and bad John Cusack films, the world will end in 2012. But don't believe everything you read.

Either way, 2012 will signal the end of the world for the current generation of consoles. We've already spent time with the Nintendo Wii U and will see it at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on January 10, a series of wiley rumors of Microsoft's neXtbox itched our ears throughout 2011, and Naughty Dog is apparently already terrified of the PlayStation 4. 2012 will ostensibly give us the first real look at what's next for the Big 3 first-party platforms – Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

Nearly seven years into the life-cycle of Xbox 360, and almost six years into PS3 and Wii, gamers, developers, publishers and gaming media alike will yet again dig out and begin overusing the 'next-gen' moniker, and become faced with the real and growing questions that surround a new batch of hardware in 2012.

Here's what we should really be asking, though: do we really need another generation of systems? Last go around, we definitely did. This time, the answer is no. At least not more closed systems like we have now. Here's why.

Consider the state of gaming - and the world of entertainment - back in 2005 and 2006, during the end of the Xbox, GameCube and, to a lesser-degree, the perennial PS2 generation. Gaming was a standard definition affair, no precedent or proven business model really existed for digital games on consoles and music games were de rigueur. No one gave a lick about motion-controls, mainstream audiences hadn't jumped onto the HDTV bandwagon due to unfamiliarity and hefty asking prices, and everyday people were just starting to get into online gaming because, to date, most folks endured average-to-crappy internet. To boot, YouTube had just kicked off, cable television was just starting to hit its creative stride and social media was in its infancy and didn't exist like it does today.

Consequently, the next-gen consoles of yore promised a massive jump into a future of high definition presentation, ease of use and of course, Nintendo's blue ocean of waggle controls. Over the course of the ensuing years of firmware updates and dashboard overhauls, we also came into what is now the current zeitgiest of inter-connectivity, including robust online networks in XBL and PSN, Netflix and built-in Facebook and Twitter access. Considering the technical jumps made over our beloved last-last-gen boxes, and the demands consumers put on first-party platform providers to keep up with the ever-advancing times, the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii ultimately delivered something for every gamer.

But what will the five-years-in-the-future versions of us want, then and now? What will we need, how will we be gaming, and what will these new boxes do for us that our current TV-stand warmers can't? Very good questions all, queries that Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony undoubtedly have top men think-tanking around the clock, even now as you read.

We've detailed 12 things we want from the PS4 and the Xbox 720, and guess what? NONE OF THEM ARE HARDWARE BASED, save Nintendo finally offering true high definition, and the call for overall improved use of motion control.

Protip: here's what we really want.

Totally unbridled access to our content. We want the ability to play anything, buy anything, watch any movie or television program, send anything, say anything, to anyone, at any time, all from our couch. We want it to look good, play good, sound good, and feel good. We want it to be easy, reasonably priced, cool and fun. These are all things that DO NOT involve new hardware. These are software solutions, firmware fixes, and new media offerings.

Here's the trick though: we only want to turn one thing on, sign in once and then get to playing. That means one box, or better yet, no box. Cloud based, internet driven access, like OnLive but with all exclusives. Or rather, no exclusives. Having to buy separate consoles just to play specific exclusive franchises like Halo, Uncharted or Zelda is an old and totally outdated model. How insane would it be if HBO, Showtime and other cable networks required that we buy separate hardware just to watch their exclusive shows? Smartly, they sell their content to providers, we get to decide which cable or satellite service to use for an overall roll-up of entertainment content, and we can even pick and choose plans to include or omit content and channels we want or do not want. This is an established model that works that most households in the world understand and use. The same should be true for gaming.

We're tired of multiple platforms, tired of swapping between systems to play games. We're tired of different online accounts, different passwords, different gamertags, usernames, friend codes, different avatars, different online currency, PlayStation trophies, Xbox Achievements, Steam Achievements, maintaining different friend lists, having towering libraries of physical games and multiple segregated online collections of digital titles, and having the whole mess of stuff separated across multiple boxes by the closed first party garden walls.

Why does the idea of turning off one cable box after watching The Walking Dead, turning on another and signing into a separate user profile to watch Dexter, each with separate accounts, hardware, monthly bills, etc., make ZERO SENSE? Because it's BATS@$% CRAZY. We would never put up with that with our television shows, but we're forced to when it comes to gaming. We want singularity and ubiquity. This is the future of gaming.

Instead, gamers will likely get 3 new boxes in the next year or so; fancier, smaller, mildly updated versions of what we already have.

In the real world, how realistic is a non-exclusive, no box scenario? Not very, at least not right now. An all digital-model would require a ridiculously gigantic infrastructure system to provide streaming games in such a way that would match what millions of gamers experience on their physical machines right now; it just doesn't currently exist. Imagine the server meltdown that would occur if every gamer in the world would have tried to download and stream-play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 on launch day from a cloud? It would've burned the internet to the ground.

The only real reason currently for updated hardware is increased processing power and fidelity. As far as today's systems go, the current hardware is aging in its RAM, graphical processing and overall performance capabilities. There will come a time very soon when the current systems simply won't be able to keep up with the technical advances that developers like Epic are making, among many others. The Samaritan demo, which shows off the prowess of Epic's Unreal Engine 3, offers a glimpse of a future that will require more hardware muscle, period.

If skipping a generation of boxes is out of the question, adaptable boxes more akin to PCs make more sense than traditional consoles. Microsoft was onto something with the original idea of swappable hard drives in the Xbox 360 (Sony's HDD are as well, though much more unwieldy), but none of the systems are truly upgradeable.

If we indeed must suffer another generation of boxes, give us systems that actually last 10 years or more because of the ability to periodically upgrade the RAM, the processors and other important innards.

Ether way, Big 3, take notice. You should think long and hard before throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at another generation of mildly updated versions of what we already have. Who knows, the people could revolt and go all Palahniuk and really start the end of the world, project mayhem style. Or worse, we might just stop buying your games.


Casey Lynch is Editor-in-Chief of IGN.com. Follow him on MyIGN and Twitter.

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