The sad thing, from a technical perspective, about most of the recent consoles, is they are basically PCs. There is no more crazy ASIC design leading to graphics performance light years ahead of non-console computers, or the last console generation. For a while there we got used to the new gen consoles being leaps ahead of the current state of the art anywhere (including PCs). However, once GPUs got commoditized and mass produced, continuing that trend became impractical. The good news is that while next gen consoles won't be leaps ahead of state of the art, this is not necessary to have good games, and an extremely fun gaming experience not possible on any other platform.

The sad thing I mentioned above is at the same time very exciting to me--once there is no crazy custom ASIC design, developers won't have as much trouble writing games. You basically get a PC with a blessed system configuration and a well known API that will lead to more and better performing games than during the last generation.

As far as console vs. phone or PC, I don't see them going away any time soon. They have many advantages over both.