When do you play games?  I mean, here I am, in a pub, equipped with iPad and iPhone and it occurred to me that I do tend to play games more on my handheld devices than I do on PC, Xbox 360, Wii or PS3.  I do have a DSi, but what's the point of those, when you can get the functionality and variety of games for cheaper on Apple's ubiquitous mobile phone.

It seems to me that gaming is coming out of the closet, out of the dim anaemic light of the house and out, proudly, into the open.  You can see people Doodle Jumping on the train, playing Babo Crash and whatever else while they're waiting in doctor's offices, having a cigarette outside of a pub or, well, wherever and whenever the mood takes them.  No longer do I use the books in my loo, I'm generally there, trying my luck and reflexes on Monster Dash, while sitting upon the porcelain throne.  I'm hardly alone in doing so, bite-sized games, and more involved titles with great graphics, sounds and playability have made their way happily onto our mobiles which we always have with us.

So what about our clunky old consoles?  It's been a while - comparatively - since I was playing the 360 and my PS3 has just turned into a Folding@home device, though I did slip a PS1 game in the other day, just for giggles.  If we look ahead five years, will PS4 and Xbox 1080 be struggling to survive against fierce competition from the handheld convenience of the £2.99 downloadable game, developed for just the one device?  Will iPhone IX have a graphical capability akin to the 360?  Tomorrow's 3DS is meant to, so what if it is?  Will we ever need to grip a separate controller again?

And when, say, Infinity Ward develops for these distant and astoundingly powerful handhelds, will the Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony versions of the games be merely ports of the iPhone game?  It seems that since we are creatures of convenience, we may feel as though there's no need to replace our HDTVs when they conk out in the hopefully-distant future; we watch TV on our phones now and that ability is merely going to expand to cover more broadcast content.  I can download Doctor Who series five now on iTunes and have been able to, several months prior to its DVD release in November.  With that on a 720p iPad, should I even bother with the DVDs?  And if I'm thinking that, how many other people are thinking the same?

Entertainment is evolving.  Torrents notwithstanding, it's far easier and cheaper for us to stay sitting on our arses and just download the content we want when we want it.  We don't need to watch the news or weather any more with it all available on our phones.  The internet is mostly available and compatible with phones so in five years' time, where will all this leave our consoles, that currently supply clunky browsers, limited social networking interaction and, if we're terribly honest, incredible - but incredibly overpriced - games.  Where your 360 console first-person shooter will cost you £40, NOVA on the iPhone will set you back a mere £2.99.  And it.  Is.  Superb.  Okay, so the poly count is somewhat low, and the textures are a bit low-res, but for one thirteenth of the cost, you're getting far more than one thirteenth of the experience, plus the ability to play while having a poo, which you can't do unless you move your console and TV into the smallest room.

I love my consoles - please don't get me wrong - but the natural evolution of gaming devices will be driven by our needs.  And we want things to be there when we want them.  Who wants to dedicate time for gaming when you can use gaming to plug the gaps between doing other things?  This way the time that would otherwise be wastes is optimised with entertainment.

If Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo want to keep ahead of the game, they're going to have to dedicate time, effort and money towards developing for the most popular portable device of the day.  At the moment, that's the iPhone and there's a lot of legal wrangling to go through before we see, say, Fable III on that device.

The tectonic plates of the gaming world are shifting, there will be earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes, but in a few years, we will see the shape of the new world and unless the console pushers learn to adapt to the changing, more portable future, they risk becoming extinct.