Will Apple Be The Game-Changer?

I've been saying this for years, and I'll keep saying it until I get either the satisfaction of history proving me right or the lesson of history proving me wrong: The end of dedicated gaming-consoles is coming soon, and it will be heralded by games becoming a regular feature of streaming-enabled TV devices. Whether it will be the Ouya, OnLive, or something else... it's coming, and it will change everything.

Lately, I've added a caveat to that, only half-joking: In the near future, there will not be ONE device for all of your movie/music/game/etc content - there'll be two: The one that holds a solid majority of your stuff... and the Apple one that holds all the Apple-exclusives. Okay, maybe an excessive "dig" at the late Mr. Jobs' "keep it in he family" approach to technology, but you get the idea.

According to the Wall Street Journal, though, my "joke" is inching closer to reality: Apple may be developing a "next gen" successor to it's thus-far modestly-recieved "Apple TV" set-top device that would allow it to stream cable TV and "other content." Presumably, "other content" mostly means movie/music delivery a'la iPads comes to TV... but the i-devices are ALSO a big part of gaming. It wouldn't be TOO difficult (just figuring out how to control it, really) to bring iOS gaming to TVs via such a device; and if Apple DID do that and it "clicked" with people... they could become to the streaming-age of home gaming what Nintendo was to the console age via the NES.

One way or another, this is the future.