id Software co-founder John Carmack believes the next generation of consoles will have a long future.
During E3, the lead programmer of the Doom, Quake and Rage explained (via CVG):
I hesitate to predict anything five, six years into the future, but the next generation should last a long time. Console gaming might morph. You can certainly see cloud gaming being built into every display device and traditional consoles could become more like the audiophile niche of people who want the extreme experience there.
Carmack has been present at E3 in order to showcase his Head-Mounted Display. However, although he displayed the motion-tracking technology on PC, Carmack stressed that console gaming features several benefits over the former platform’s development:
In many ways this would have been easier to do on consoles, but unfortunately you can’t just plug a USB device into a console and have it work; you have to have it certified and go through a whole process. And that’s a little bit of a shame because even though the PC is ten times more powerful sometimes getting something done at the exact right point is easier on the consoles – it’s a place where you know what scanline you’re on at any point, and so on.
Sony’s life cycle for the PlayStation 3 is 10 years, with 2012 being the sixth year. Next year, though, it’s highly expected that they, along with Microsoft, reveal their next-gen console in the form of the PlayStation 4. We may have to wait until the latter releases their console, though. That said, games for the unannounced platform are already in development.
