"Most times next gen is used it's meant to assume current gen"
NO
Next gen meant = Normal mapping , bloom , dynamic shadows , i.e. , shaders, which today most all engines have , and are technically , next gen , even gamestudio.

Now back to the point , the thing is , some people , like myself , have been using gamestudio since A5 , actually from later stages of A4 for me, So , I've been messing around with gamestudio for a good deal of time already. And while I've always LOVED gamestudio , and praised it above all other engines , I'm now looking at engines a bit more seriously , and am thoroughly impressed by how much Torque is maturing , and by how feature rich Unity is , while being very disappointed at gamestudio's VERY SLOW progress. Truly gamestudio is focusing more and more on the programing side , while forgetting they have always catered to the NON PROGRAMMERS. Lite C is just a pile of garbage, wdl , then c script , then lite c , what's coming for A8 , lite C ++ ? Who cares about that ? If I cared about that why would I even consider using gamestudio ?

To the people here saying features don't really matter, are you all retarded ?
Why do you think people pay close to a MILLION DOLLARS for engines like Unreal Engine 3 ? Why not hire a programmer to just program their engines from scratch ? Now how about this , why don't they themselves program them instead ? It's a retarded argument. Yes , you can create almost anything with gamestudio , but as technology advances , this other engines are jumping in and making their engines as advanced as possible while maintaining good user friendly interface.

Have you all seen the Cry engine 2 in action ? One of the things the developers are very proud of is their real time deverlopment environment , with the ability to manipulate and edit everything in game and getting a real time result. Do you think if this wasn't important , and a great tool for the art developers , they would be so proud of it ?

Tools are IMPORTANT , gamestudio IS a tool itself. It is what we are buying , a tool to create games , that handles as much of the core programming as possible, kinda like windows handles DOS for us , I'm sure you all would argue that using DOS gives you more flexibility ? LOL. Gamestudio WAS the #1 indie game engine , with wdl being one of it's biggest advantages over torque.
Now , Torque and Unity are the top 2 , and I would say gamestudio is prolly around #3 , which still isn't bad , but , I can honestly say , I still have A6 , and don't plan on ever upgrading to A7 , or A8 (unless A8 actually shows improvement , which I HIGHLY doubt), but as soon as I get enough money you can be sure I'm buying Torque 3D AND Unity.

Gamestudio = toy studio
Torque and Unity = professional game development studios