During an interview with Industry Gamers, creator of Ultima, Richard Garriott had a few things to say about consoles. He thinks consoles will be extinct in the near future. Really...

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With consoles multi-billion dollar, long-term investments for companies such as Sony and Microsoft, it is a bet. A big one. Longer development cycles are now the norm, with both companies touting a 10-year life cycle for this generation, and we're already up to seven years now.

Consoles are also now faced with super-tough competition from what seems all sides. Smartphones are more powerful than ever, tablets will receive quad-core chips within days thanks to NVIDIA's Tegra 3 and the first Tegra 3-powered tablet, ASUS' Eee Pad Transformer Prime. Social gaming on PC is not helping with companies such as Zynga having over 100 million active users on games such as CityVille.

Garriott says:

I think we might get one more generation, might, but I think fundamentally they're doomed. I think fundamentally the power that you can carry with you in a portable is really swamping what we've thought of as a console.

I tend to agree, with the pace of mobile chips right now, I just can't see a 10-year next-gen console life cycle. PC technology is just so much more advanced, yet games are held back because of the investments Microsoft and Sony have made.