Speculative questions: off topic?

Question

There have been a rash of questions recently that basically are little more than speculative discussions. To me, these questions seem to be more of a discussion starting point than an actual question to be answered.

I'm also on the fence about where these kinds of questions would lie on the good subjective/bad subjective spectrum.

These questions haven't as-of-yet been consistently moderated, so I'm looking to get a consensus from the community on the best way to move forward.

Examples:

• Will multi-touch become an important/standard method of input for PC games in the future?
• Will we see a trend of stereoscopic 3D games coming up in the near future?
• https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/5024/what-will-the-real-time-3d-graphics-of-next-generation-consoles-like-playstation

Potential courses of action:

1. Do nothing. They're good questions and answers probably fall under the "expertise" section of the subjective discussion.
2. Convert them to CW to allow the discussion to continue but avoid pitfalls of rep farming
3. Close as off topic
4. Somehow handle on a case-by-case basis.

For reference, at least the Photo SE site has decided that speculation on future hardware is off topic. Relevant discussion is here. Some of the other sites are considering similar measures, but they're usually about unreleased hardware.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

Anyone who has seen my comments/votes probably knows I support #3.

There are plenty of game development forums out there already for such questions. Questions like these greatly decrease the S:N ratio on Stack Exchange sites, and their absence is exactly why I, and many others, prefer SE sites to forums.

CW is fine for questions with multiple answers, or questions that can be backed by subjective but evidence-based opinions. It's also OK for list questions, but I think some of the ones we've had so far are silly.

These questions, by contrast, are not just subjective but speculative. They're entirely guesswork. Not only is there no right answer, there's no clear way to judge the quality of the answers - especially when not a single answer cites any reference nor is a personal story from an expert, as is the case with all the questions you've linked.