One of my favourite strategies for avoiding people I don’t want to talk to is to immerse myself in my phone. Most often it leads to me cursing my way through a round of Temple Run. Sometimes though, it leads to constructive thoughts – like this one. During one of my diversion tactics, I came across a tweet by Cheat Central asking gamers what we really want to see from the next generation of consoles. It was after I had typed and erased four separate answers that I realized I had no idea what I was talking about.

The part of this question that perplexed me most was having to invent something that I thought would benefit the masses and add real value. What missed opportunities did the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii have that we can take advantage of? It’s a lot harder to create than it is to improve. There is no successor (yet) to Blu Ray that will incite another format war. Voice and motion control have been implemented successfully. Cloud computing is here, albeit not fully realized. So where then, should we focus our efforts? What more do we want?

If the crickets in my head kept chirping, I’d probably just stick with my current generation systems for the foreseeable future. But, even I know there is room for improvement and I’ve written about it time and time again in the past months without even knowing that what I was compiling was a list of features I want from the next generation of gaming.

Better graphics. Most of us don’t even comprehend what visual improvements could be made, but this feature will continue to be top-of-list as one of the easiest ways to discern how much better the new stuff is than the old. Until we can see the back-hair popping out of Mario’s overalls (actually that may be too far), we will push for more pixels, better frame-rates and everything else needed to intensify our eye-gasms.

More services. They gave us Netflix, well now we want more Netflix. Having the capabilities is one thing, but very few of the features introduced in pursuit of the ultimate entertainment have reached their full potential. It’s like the framework has been laid, and it is the duty of the next generation to build on that.

More franchises, more games. This is a given. Whether we want some brand new sagas or new iterations of old favourites, there’s no better way to showcase the leaps and bounds between generations than by embarking on new, multi-title journeys. One of the easiest ways to remember any era of console is by reminiscing over the platform’s greatest games, and we are eagerly awaiting the next wave of blockbusters.

Innovate the Controller. And we don’t mean flailing around or shouting “reload”. We want to be able to shoot with better precision, move with the utmost accuracy and experience a tighter, more responsive way of playing. Deliberate control is the name of the game. Now as to how this can be accomplished…

I don’t know. A lot of game journalists will refrain from uttering the phrase because they believe it shows a lack of command in our craft. But frankly, I have no shame in saying that I don’t know all of the things I want from the next consoles. We may have ideas of how things can be improved, but if you asked me to move around the joysticks or bumper buttons to accomplish this goal I’d be more out of place than Chris Brown at a Womens’ Rights convention. The fact that we don’t know is not of concern to some of us, and I’m fine with being impressed when it all comes to fruition.

Do you have an idea of what you want to see from future consoles? Let us know in the comments below.