Why oh why didn't they make the thing much slimer by having an external power unit? I mean who really looks at the cable on the floor? And why didn't they make it glossy and shiny like the the outside of the original PS3 model?

If the iPhone had some proper buttons with which to control the onscreen action then both the DS and PSP would be in a lot of trouble.

Smartphones are the future. Will there even be another generation of hand held games devices?

Pachter is completely correct in that the breakdown of the 5 year cycle is due to the Wii. Sony and Microsoft were completely blind sided by the Wii and it's killer combo of a "gimmick" control scheme that everyone is curious to try and a low price.

If they bring out a higher spec console now who is going to buy it apart from the enthusiast gamers? I'd like to see better graphics as much as the next enthusiast, but the fact is that semi-casual gamers now dominate the market.

I think the other problem is that the increments by which each generation of consoles improves over the last is becoming smaller. So each generation of consoles effectively faces more composition than the last. The graphical jump from the Mega Drive and SNES to the PSOne was huge. PSOne to PSTwo was still significant. PSTwo to PS3/XBox wasn't such a huge leap. And a cheaper console won this generation. Will PS4/XboxNext do so much more than the current generation apart from provide slightly better graphics?

Another review by EDGE that hits the nail on the head. Having not played the game this article has articulated my fear that it actually won't be that much fun to play due to the large world being relatively content free.

Computers can now render large reasonably lifelike worlds filled with reasonably lifelike looking characters. However computers are no where near powerful enough to give these characters real intelligence, or to fill the environment with real characters to interact with.

The best games are the ones that involve simple but fun mechanics. World simulators are some way off yet.