If you've been around since the 80's it may be hard for you to envision the interactive landscape without some sort of cumbersome console laying under your television waiting for you to put a cartridge or DVD into.  Fortunately for you this won't soon be the case as our ability to stream vast amounts of content has increased substantially over the past decade or so.

The "Console War" would be a term that has come to define the competition between hardware industry giants for the past three decades.  The well defined lines of warring fans have been blurred over the years.  This is due in part to the number of quality titles being released exclusively on certain consoles.  The other and more likely reason is that the initial video game generation has grown up, and obtained the expendable patronage with which to purchase all of the consoles if they so choose.  There is no denying that Nintendo has been the longest standing competitor, but with Sony's and Microsoft's cemented establishment in the console market the ascendance of one particular platform is unlikely and with major changes once again looming in the interactive industry it may not matter.

We've all already seen the beginning of this shift through the live clients available on the Wii, Xbox 360, and Playstaion 3, but many industry professionals are predicting the day that we will acquire all games in this fashion.  While this concept is not only exciting, and capable of creating even more of a boom in the current economic climate of the video game industry, it is going to have serious repercussions for the firmly vested hardware contenders.

With the advent of downloadable content we will soon see the day when consumers no longer have to purchase hardware consoles that have recently broken the half a grand mark.  We are reaching what is being called the 8^th official console cycle which is estimated to be between 2013 and 2014.  There are however doubts among many in the community that we will see a 9^th.

Some have even claimed that we will not see an 8^th cycle, and this would certainly be true if everyone who plays video games had affordable access to the technology required for such a transition in the game market.  While interactive companies have brought about a great deal of advancement in the medium they still must abide by the constraints of the market majority.  With this proposed digital distribution of all game titles one would be effectively alienating all those who do not play games online whether consciously or circumstantially. I know there are still quite a few of you out there who have yet to join the online community.

Even with the removal of the familiar hardware from our living rooms there will be no getting around having some sort of device sitting sitting bellow the television.  How the technical aspects of this endeavor are going to work out between Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, I'm not sure.  I shall leave the particulars up to those who are compensated for the task.  However, OnLive seems to have given us a preview of what is to come.