Are Traditional Game Consoles Soon to be a Thing of the Past?

With Nintendo scheduled to take the veil off its “Wii 2” in the weeks to come, speculation has begun to run rampant with regards to what kind of console it’s going to be, or if it’s going to be the last of its kind. For those who just love their traditional console experiences, there’s no good feeling in picturing the boxes as we know them going the way of the dodo, but some do believe it’s going to happen.

In an article posted at Fox News, a couple of people – gamer and analysts – weigh in on the future of console gaming. The gamer interviewed admitted to now gaming more on his iPhone than on his Wii or Xbox 360, and outspoken analyst Michael Pachter says that game consoles are assuredly going to be moving to the cloud – as in, all of the games will be accessible online, not off.

Services like OnLive, which already offer cloud-based gaming, are slow on the uptake. However, that could primarily be due to the fact that there are launch issues to deal with, and early tech that’s limiting its allure. But the mobile gaming mention is an important one as well. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that more play games on their phones than their consoles – but how many people bring their consoles with them when they leave the house?

As someone who’s been a console fan since the NES, and also someone who hates total reliance it the cloud (look no further than the PSN outage to understand why), I don’t like the idea of our game consoles changing their ways. But, it’s clear that neither Microsoft or Sony know exactly what to expect, either, which is why neither have announced follow-ups to their respective consoles released more than five years ago.

What do you guys think? Will we get another full generation of consoles, or will things drastically change before that’s able to happen?

To further complicate the issue, consumers are already warming to the idea of not owning their games, production consultant Keith Fuller told FoxNews.com. “Every time someone uses Gmail, Netflix Instant, or Amazon’s Cloud Player, they’re already buying into the concept of using a service without physically owning or installing something.” Translation: As long as they get to play their favorites, gamers won’t care how they access their games, so “established consoles will have to rethink how they operate,” Fuller adds.