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The seemingly only analyst that covers the video game industry, Michael Pachter has reportedly commented on the next-generation of hardware already but estimates that we won’t see any of it on store shelves until 2013. Despite being a long way away compared to previous generations it begs a few questions. Is anyone really unhappy with the current crop of consoles? What’s next for console hardware? Will concepts like OnLive make this whole debate irrelevant?

Video gaming has never been more exciting. Hardware and content distribution are taking new and radical turns announcement by announcement. Steam has revolutionized the PC market to such an extent that it’s starting to influence consoles and On Live’s conceptual merits earnt it the position of focal point in many discussions on the future of the industry as a whole. With that in mind how can anyone pinpoint what will happen in four years time?

The rumoured, but basically announced, PSP Go! is more of an iteration than simply a brand new system and model. Maybe this is the preferred direction of hardware manufacturers. Microsoft and Sony are on the bleeding edge of technology but how far can this tech be pushed. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is more than happy with the power of the current crop of systems so what else do we really need. Well the Xbox 360 needs to be more reliable and the Playstation 3 just needs more games but all the elements are there. Both of these will quite happily come with time or iterations in hardware but not innovations. Where do the systems go next after an apparent visual cap?

Although all this talk could become obsolete when OnLive hits and lives up to it’s expectations. Well the truth is that their is a lot of doubt coming from numerous sides regarding OnLive but mainly you would have to put it down to limited bandwidth capabilities. These will eventually come one day and we’ll have a network and infrastructure to support a complex system like this. But when that day comes will the tech for powering the current crop of games be so cheap that a service like OnLive is laughable. Moore’s Law serves up the tantalizing situation of dirt cheap Playstation 3s or Xbox 360s and who really wants much more processing than these? When you can get more than capable processing at home for cheap who will want to rely on a virtual service over the internet?

You have to be open minded when it comes to gaming tech though. New network protocols, graphics infrastructures and processing cores are advanced all the time but when will the latest tech become irrelevant to gaming? Sure it would be stunning to see future consoles with 24 CPU Core’s and a Terrabyte of memory but how much of this will be useful to developers or the end users? I remember hearing that most games don’t even use half the six cores inside the Playstation 3. So why should users have to pay for tech that developers won’t use?

Obviously all of this is speculation and should be taken with a pinch of salt but you’ve got to pose the question of tech. We are hitting a graphical peak and now gaming has to use artistic vision to be unique and we’ve definitely started to see examples of that. You’ve really got to question where the industry is going. Despite the surefire majority of tests and failures that will be down the road they are vital to the industry’s growth as a whole and it’s exciting to even think about where we are going.