Lots of rings to rule all living rooms

At the ongoing GDC event, Rob Pardo of World of Warcraft studio Blizzard has confirmed that they are in talks with Microsoft over the next iteration of the Xbox console. He doesn't elaborate on the matter, only saying that they are actively talking about it with Microsoft. May still be too early to expect a new console in the near future though.

If they are in the process of developing a new console, developers seem to be in the dark about it, worrying some people that the next generation of consoles might be more focused on "owning the living room" rather than actually putting out games. Says Disney's Junction Point Studios' Warren Spector:

I get the impression they're focusing on owning the living room. One device that lets you watch movies, television and play games and music and all that stuff. They're so focused on that that I'm not even sure they're thinking about the games that are going to come out. Which is kind of crazy.

Pardo suggested that Blizzard may be vying for a more RTS-friendly console, possibly looking into possibilities to bringing their popular but console-unfriendly games like Starcraft outside of PC gaming:

There are are so many games like we make at Blizzard that we don't take to consoles because they don't support the input device and you end up with crappy ports. That's why RTS games never do well on consoles.

If I was them, I'd be sitting around trying to figure out what's a cool input device that supports all types of new kinds of games.

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