Jobs would never have done it. He left Halo on the table. There was plenty of opportunity to outdo MS at gaming, particularly because of how incompetent MS has been these last ten years with Xbox and Games for Windows, and he never took it. The only way I see Apple doing it is if Cook loses his grip on the company and they start wanting to BE Microsoft, or Sony.

Apple will make boxes capable of gaming, yes. iPhone/Pad/Mac/Apple TV certainly can and do play games. But they won't be at the front supporting it with first-party games or making a developer-friendly environment or promoting it for gaming. They'll take 30% off anyone who CAN make it, sure, but they won't help them.

If Apple TV does get all the content deals you'd imagine, it will indeed sell a lot. But a console needs GAMES and so it either needs a strong first-party lead or ALL the big third parties genuinely on board for two years (not the fake support Wii U is getting). 

Example: PSP. Lots sold, terrible attach ratio and no real earnings from software, because people used it as a media machine.

I'd like to see Samsung try a console, but all the companies are going about it the wrong way: via hardware. You can have the best box around and still not succeed because people only buy the box to get to the games they want.

If Samsung are smart they will clone the biggest games of the past and launch with outstanding sequels to them - Mario, Zelda, Wii Sports, Call of Duty, GTA, Halo. The first three require a dev team of no more than 20 people and are stunningly cheap to make very high quality.

Could Samsung kick Sony out as a hardware developer like Sony did to Sega?

You may be right. This post makes a lot of sense and you are an intelligent young man.

I didn't think about the developer-unfriendlyness of Apple, among other factors you listed that talk against Apple dominating gaming or directly competing with Sony and MS.

Samsung is harder to analyze. It seems even you think that there is a chance that they will in some weird way enter the console business, or at least into the hardcore gaming market in one form or another.

I do think Samsung will do /something/. They have the cash, talent and business knowledge to start competing in some new area of electronics.

I have no idea about Apple. They are the most successful company around, but all indicators are that they just want to coast on that success and deliver for shareholders instead of customers. I don't think they'll be revolutionising much going forward.

yes please !

About Apple, check out that new thread about conquering the living room and post your thoughts of how gaming can be tied into that. (speaking of revolutionising or not)

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=149219&page=1#2

I don't know what you guys think but I'm afraid that there is no room for 3 profitable home consoles.

Perhaps Samsung is just trying to develop some exclusive games to their cellphones and TV's to increase the value of these products.

@UltimateUnknown

You have a good question, considering Sony's current situation they can be forced to left the market if a new successful player enters in the console industry. Things can change fast because the gaming market is very dynamic. But without knowing what kind of business model Sony will follow with the PS4 it's hard to predict the company's future. I just don't hope they delay to much their new console otherwise it's going to be hard to compete with a Nintendo console with reasonable third party support.

It would get quite interesting for a phone company like Samsung to be in gaming, maybe they will do better than Nokia and it's n-gage

You mean the generation after PS4 / Xbox720? Or do you think those consoles will completely break with the past?

I have it all in a thread I created... back in March maybe... but I'm talking about this coming generation. We have learned nothing about wiiU's OS beyond NintendoTVii and that it claims 1GB of the RAM, far higher than any previous game console. We have no clue what the other services will be and so far, the nintendoTVii is pretty robust.

MS has Windows8 with its new push on its web store. That will definitely expand in the neXtBox and it will be a full media console with gaming capabilities. 

Sony started some of this with Vita, but it hasn't done well for many other reasons. Sony has a massive stake in full media capabilities. Expect them to put out a full multimedia device that again, puts Gaming as just one simple part of the overall box.

This is also the reason why I think we won't see a massive jump in tech like the current gen over last. Why these two won't be significantly more powerful than WiiU. Sony/MS know Google and Apples natural move is to push gaming on their existing products and use it to expand their TV connected devices.