It's quite advantageous for both developers who need less money to make a great looking game, and console manufacturers who can easily secure exclusives that play to their console's strengths.

they do, but they don't share them ^^

looolz

it will fail  when you have to choose amongst 10 different consoles it will be very difficult but when you have to choose amongst 3 it is easy further more most 3rd parties support  all consoles if they make their own console they will end up being the only company to produce games for their console

They do, however they are designed specifically for their consoles and 3rd parties would rather have a single engine that can create a game for more than one console. Otherwise it would end up costing the 3rd party more money to make a multi-console game that woudl require teams per consoles to work with the very different engines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhyreEngine

Sony made lots of engines, but they only shared quite few (maybe just one if i remember)

Nintendo makes one engine per console, and they don't share it.

Microsoft on the other hand rely on third party engines , mostly Unreal Engine.

One per console only on Nintendo's part? I find that dubious...

Sony Phyre Engine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhyreEngine

yeah they used the same for luigi's mansion, windwalker and twilight princes.... I would have thought it was obvious from the identical look of the games :p

it's like wii sports, SMG, SMBWii and Zelda SS, same engine ^^