Next Generation: help or hindrance to game sales?

The past few months have been great for the videogame industry with the release of GTA San Andreas and Halo 2. Both games destroyed all records for the sale of a computer game even managing to become the most successful entertainment releases ever. The Computer and Videogames website had this to say about Halo 2 specifically.

“That means it' s been more successful than any movie or music release in history. To put things in perspective, the highest grossing movie at the US box office ever - Titanic - took $600 million during the course of its screen run. Halo 2 has taken over a sixth of this in one day.”

www.computerandvideogames.com

The glass ceiling has been well and truly broken through and it seems games are starting to be looked upon seriously as the next big form of entertainment though out the world.

There’s just one down side to this I can see. Unlike other forms of entertainment with a universal way of engaging with them Videogames are spread over several systems. And to make matters worse these systems only last an average of 5 years before being made obsolete by a new ‘better’ console.

My question to all of you out there in Kikizo land is do you think the looming next generation of console will harm or help videogames as they are at the moment?

With a new generation is basically means console sales figures reset back to zero and any game released around or near launch can’t possibly hope to do half as well as the GTA’s and Halo 2’s of now… can they?