With the buzzword "next-gen" being tossed around all too casually in today's industry, it's easy to get confused as to what actually is next-gen and what isn't. So what really is next-gen? At this year's Game Developers Conference, this was exactly what five gaming luminaries, namely Peter Molyneux, Phil Harrison, Chris Taylor, Raph Koster and Neil Young, discussed. Let's see what they had to say about this matter.

Neil Young opened the discussion by bringing up two important points: that people shouldn't really fault incremental improvements, because everything is incremental in some degree - and that innovation, while important, can be difficult for the consumer to absorb right away. So while a game sequel or even a new console may only offer incremental improvements over its predecessor, a radical change or innovation can also work against it.

Ralph Koster followed up with his own idea of next-gen - that is, online play. His own words:

It's not the graphics, right? Xbox Live is the next gen game you play on 360. It's the connectivity and the meta games. Next-next-gen will cut across more platforms.