I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that I am a raving madman who spouts nonsense. You are probably right. I am making a radical statement to a hardcore gaming community. A community that if it were a fans of a sports team, i would probably be lynched in the parking lot for voicing my opinion. Since I am rather confident of the anonymity of this website, I will speak to anyone who will listen.
To get off on the right foot, I am not saying that we should abandon game development. I am a fan of games, and I would very much like to see them get better. My only problem is with that fact that every new generation of gaming consoles pushes development of games into a higher costs and longer development cycles. Hearing the constant complaints of the complexity of new consoles, and the shrinking profit margins associated with the production of these new games has me scared. I can foresee a time where developers will see a new console, and decide not to push the limits of it simply because it would cost too much.
As long as the gaming market continues to increase in size, this will not be a problem. A larger market will cause more sales of good games, and that will provide a incentive for better produced games. But the rate of technological advancement will certainly advance beyond the sales potential of most games. I can't perfectly foresee the results of this, but anyone can tell the ramifications of this will not be beneficial to the gaming community.
Of the three big hardware companies, Nintendo is the only one who claims to understand this. Although I believe that their claims are more of a marketing gimmick then an attempt to rectify this situation. Nintendo has limited the technology of their console to make development cheaper, as well as made a brand new control scheme. I believe that this is the right approach. I just don't agree with Nintendo's method of execution. I think that Nintendo's machine is more marketed for the causal gaming world. Even their high profile games such as Wii Fit are far from hardcore, and provides exercise of equal or lesser value then simply walking.
Even so I think that Sony, and Microsoft has something to learn from Nintendo. They should not only look to broaden their market, as well as further push the effort of playing games in new ways. I don't agree with what Nintendo is doing, but I do like what might become of its efforts.
If we limited the technology similar to what Nintendo did in our next gen of consoles, then maybe we will all be better for it.