If there were no Sony of Microsoft, the competition would be just as intense... just different. Sega wouldn't have gotten pounded as hard as they did on Saturn, and they would have been able to re-organize better for Dreamcast, which would have either forced Nintendo into doing *something* incredible with the GameCube or forced them to scrable something at the last minute to get it out the door within a year of Sega.
People seem to forget that Dreamcast was the first console that implimented real-time online competition. Online would still be around today. People seem to underestimate how much the market evolves by itself. Your 25 year-old gamer today was ten in 1992. If he's an avid gamer, he's going to keep playing, regardless of the fact that he's getting older. If you have 20 million 10 year-olds in 1992 buying games, then you're going to have probably 15 million of them still buying games as 15 year-olds in 1997, along with another crop of 20 million 10 year-olds. 2002 would see probably the same 15 million, but now they're 20, and there's another 15 million 15 year-olds. There you have a maturing industry. I think it would have happened without Sony or Microsoft.
Edit: Mr. Stickball, I'm sorry, but this is *really* bugging me... the phrase is "would have," not "would of." People just use "would've" as a contraction and it sounds like it. Normally I try not to be a grammar nazi, but that just made me cringe.
