Kojima, whose "Metal Gear Solid" games have sold more than 27 million copies, says the future of video gaming is on networks that will free players from consoles supplied by the likes of his long-time partner Sony Corp.
"In the near future, we'll have games that don't depend on any platform," Kojima said at a news conference

Does this mean that there will soon be a universal programing language?

no, but multi-platform engines/runtimes/players. probably he mainly means stuff like onlive. i wonder how this future will affect small indie developers.

No. He meant that soon, we would have platform independent hardware and APIs that would enable programmers to write code that works under any platform. He was right; look at how much USB technology has taken off, and DirectX, OpenGL, SDL, etc. He also meant that we would be able to work with others and collaborate over the internet very easily. He was right about that, too.

Platform independence is becoming popular with programmers and it is ever-growing. However, this growing trend is being HAMPERED by the fact that we have companies like Microsoft who produce proprietary technology, unwilling to share with others.

i think this will help the indie market since the absence of hardware could make a game like Monaco-by Pocketwatch Games-just as popular as a game produced by a big name company.

why?

I imagine he's talking about similar things to Flash or Java. These days Unity will play from a web-browser as well; it doesn't matter what OS you're on.

I think that's all he's talking about, just scaled up even more.

Jibb