This upcoming next-gen release of consoles is something long-awaited by gamers, it's different than years past as there are five consoles that will be filling up the store fronts. Some of you, that don't follow gaming news, are looking at that trying to think in your head, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo... but what else? Well besides each other, the three have two more competitors to look forward to battling with. The five that will be marketing for your money are: Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Steam, and Ouya (which we'll call Google).
5. Smoother Multiplayer
Next-gen consoles won't solve the connection/lag issues that are common today, but hopefully with a new release of consoles the developers/publishers will beef up their servers to provide seamless multiplayer experiences. I won't hold my breath on this one, but it's something that I envision with "Next-Gen". Imagine getting online and playing for a few hours without ever noticing any lag or host errors... we probably wouldn't even notice, but that's better than noticing three to four connection errors each round.
4. Faster Load Times
Something that absolutely bugs me in current games is the load times. If you've played large open world games like GTA or Skyrim then you can understand what I mean. Skyrim isn't as bad since the developers found a way around that - but it takes five minutes just to start up a game of GTA, and that's unacceptable. Unfortunately, the speed next-gen consoles will usher in will ultimately allow games to look better and play better, and load times probably won't change - but one can dream.