Last month, That VideoGame Blog had a chance to talk with Sandy Duncan, former Xbox Europe executive and co-founder/CEO of YoYo Games (read the interview: Part I, Part II). Topics of discussion ranged from the launch of YoYo Games, the recent acquisitions in the industry to casual gaming and so on.

However none of those topics garnered as much attention as his thoughts on where the industry will be in 5-10 years. Duncan believes that consoles will die out and will become “virtualized” as web services. “The industry is fundamentally driven by technology. I think dedicated games devices i.e. consoles (and handhelds) will die [out] in the next 5 to 10 years,” Duncan said, adding, “In fact in 5 to 10 years I don’t think you’ll have any box at all under your TV..”

That answer spread like wildfire and was posted on every imaginable site and blog that had anything to do with technology and/or gaming, starting with the likes of GameSpot, Joystiq, Wired, Endaget, ZDNet, to name a few, and finally even ending up on Yahoo! News.

Having seen his words spread so rapidly made Duncan realize that, as he says on his newly launched blog called Games Nostradamus, “the games industry seriously lacks a hard core of people who look at the appropriate technology trends, the business, the history of the industry and combine this with current and predicted consumer trends to create any sort of long term vision for the industry. There are plenty of few folks who enjoy producing forecasts based on current sales patterns, but they rarely extend their thinking beyond a 2 to 3 year time line horizon. That’s why I believe that my few words received so much attention…they were filling a void.”

Duncan plans to share his new blog with other industry insiders to discuss “thought provoking ideas about the long term trends and the future of this $25B industry!”