An executive at Electronic Arts has said that they would like to see a single open console platform in the future. They see the industry as too fragmented and loosing its edge to other technologies.

See article here

Personally I don't think they are wrong on this one. Ironically what EA is asking for already exists. Its a standard PC in pretty box. In my mind consoles have two major advantages over PC gaming...

1. a known and locked hardware configuration. This makes life much easier on developers who now know that every person that buys the game will get an identical experience without lots of extra work.

2. So easy to use even grandma can figure it out. (in the interest of full disclosure, not my grandma)

Now with so many platforms (EA codes for 14 platforms total) I think that the hardware advantage is pretty nil if not far worse then coding for all the possible iterations of a PC. I also seldom see anything done on a console that can't be done on PC hardware.(okay, maybe not your grandmas PC)If we get to the point that a PC can boot up to a video game from nothing in under 15 seconds and 1 button, where does that leave consoles? This doesn't even consider the online gaming aspect where more and more of the gaming actually happens on the server side not in the machine in your home.

How do you gamers out there see this resolving? Will one of the big three take the prize and become the standard? Will the battle continue? Or do you see some other dark horse changing the rules?