I know these discussions were touched on in the past but I figured with some newer folks here it'd be neat to touch on this again.

Back in the early 80's when console gaming was starting to die, home computers seemed to pick up the slack. Not only could they balance check books, help you easily make banners or help you with memorizing your multiplication tables they could also play some great games. Games with such complexity that a console couldn't match the experience. Console gaming and computer gaming seemed to merge for a while: with the C64 or Atari computers being able to play games on cartridges AND tape AND disk.

The two gaming platforms then split and kind of ran parallel for quite a while. The early to mid 90's saw both platforms getting some really great games and a lot of attention. However by the turn of the century we started seeing PC gaming going the way of the consoles of old. Gaming on the PC started getting a lot of "me too" games with RTS, FPS and "Sim" games: very cookie cutter not unlike the Space Invaders and Pac-Man clones that glutted up the golden age. Interest seemed to wane as consoles became more powerful, able to give a player years of play without having to worry about upgrading a graphics card or getting a bigger hard drive.

Seeing consoles like the 360 made me wonder, more so now than ever, if the two platforms will merge again. The 360 is a monster for the price. How far-fetched would it be for Microsoft to create Windows 360? The machine has USB ports so hooking up anything USB would just need drivers. A standard TV could pass as a somewhat decent computer screen (don't think PC standard-most of us typed our reports on little TVs. Hell I typed on a black and white 10" TV and that worked just fine). Offer up email, web browsing, document writing and guess what, it plays games! Sony was mentioning having the PS3 be able to run Linux.

Doesn't seem too far fetched anymore.

So what are your thoughts?