With the upcoming releases of the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Revolution, the console wars are heating up again. Anyone who watched E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) coverage this spring knows that this time around, things are going to get messy.

With Sony’s continued dominance, Microsoft being thrown into the foray and Nintendo’s lackluster third party performance with both the Gamecube and its granddaddy the 64 it’s anyone’s guess what gaming experiences may come.

Aside from fan boys throwing down over who’s got the better controller, perhaps the most interesting development of the console wars will be the new gaming concepts and perhaps even new genres created by the pressure put on developers to create new and innovative ways to game.

With the PS3’s new “Cell” processor said to have 2 teraflops of floating point overall system performance and a graphics processor running at 550mhz, not to mention the 360’s ability to draw 500 million triangles per second and its 20 gigabyte hard drive, video game graphics will reach a new plateau. This means that most games on both systems will have very similar looking graphics, regardless of specs. (The human eye really can’t tell the difference between 450 and 500 million triangles.) In turn, this will mean that flashy graphics alone will not sell games anymore, as most will have nearly identical graphics. That’s one less crutch for developers to lean on when trying to make a game that sells.

This will force developers to create new gameplay elements and perhaps even new genres never before thought of.

As for who will come out on top of the console wars, it’s a tough call as there is not much to go on from Nintendo, but it is my prediction that pending miracle killer apps from both Microsoft and Nintendo (and by that I mean something besides Halo 3 and Katamari Damacy 2), Sony will continue their dominance.

Microsoft can afford to stay in the game for a few more consoles regardless of profits, because hey, they’re Microsoft. However, the Revolution may go the way of Dreamcast and be Nintendo’s last console release if they can’t get their act together and get some serious third party support.