PlayStation took advantage of Sega's and Nintendo's failures in the mid 90s. Sega absolutely destroying their status as a console maker provided a vacuum for PlayStation to fill. Nintendo's decision to stick with cartridges also gave Sony a huge boost as most third parties at the time were unwilling to deal the limitations of the N64's format and chose to support the PlayStation.

With Xbox, MS already had some experience in the video game market, publishing and even developing games for Windows PCs. Even then, the Xbox flopped in Europe and especially Japan, and finished a distant second in the U.S., where it sold only a third of what the PS2 sold. At 24 million units lifetime, it wasn't a complete failure, but, given the size of the global console market after Europe caught up with North America, it wasn't very impressive, either. The only reason it did even what it did was on the strength of Halo. Had they not bought out Bungie back in 2000, I honestly think the Xbox would have been a complete failure. They managed to start Gen 7 off on a better footing, but the main reason the 360 got to be so big was because Sony screwed up by releasing an overpriced system. Also, Nintendo ceasing to make conventional consoles when they went the Wii route provided an opening for Xbox to be the sole primary competitor to PlayStation.

For Google, their only chance is if they A) have some absolutely massive killer app that blows everyone away like SMB, Sonic '91, FFVII, and Halo CE did for the others, B) either Sony or MS make some huge mistake that has catastrophic consequences on their brands, providing Google an opening to exploit. I doubt the console market's ability to support three conventional systems and all three be healthy. Every time we've had more than two, we either had two successful ones and a bunch of abject failures, or we had the Gen 6 situation where one established console brand dominated, leaving the other two to fight over the scraps.

Phil Harrison involved. thanks but no thanks.

This guy had inside knowledge of both Sony and MS when he worked for them as Vice President. Even with that experience he could only barely give xbox that leading edge against sony for a short time before jumping ship to google. I just don't trust this guy.. Where is he going to go next? Apple?

Wait a minite! Microsoft absolutely subsidized XBox!  They lost $1 billion per year on the original console and defended it as “market defence against Sony” to their investors.  They lost $3 or $4 billion on 360 (can’t remember which) before they turned slightly profitable for the last half of it’s life (one billion was to pay off RROD problems, though). You could argue Xboxone is doing mediocre because ms stopped blowing all so much money on it.

This will be very interesting. I am a cloud gaming skeptic, ad I would argue a console is a smart, but very difficult, choice to try to lever your streaming service into the market. I assume we will now see Microsoft get more aggressive about consoles again...it is going to be something else.

I don’t expect major success for Google at a glance, but who knows where they could go.  definitely do not mistake that controller design for final, and don’t mistake Googlebox for Ouya, this will be totally different.

@Bolded. I've never bought into the claim that mobile hurts console gaming. The iPhone debuted almost 12 years ago, yet we've seen no real impact on the home console market. Hardware and software sales remain incredibly strong, at least in the West, with no signs of a contraction. In the U.S., same-gen console sales for the PS4 & XBO were at above 9 million units every year from 2014 to 2018, a streak that's never before been accomplished (chart below). While combined PS4+XBO sales never quite reached the peak of combined PlayStation+Xbox sales from Gens 6 & 7, the stability has been remarkable. Assuming a Nov. 2020 release date for both the PS5 and Xbox 4. I think this generation is on track to end at around 70M in the U.S., on par with combined 360+PS3 sales. Now, you could argue that the console market is now a zero-growth market, but nobody should have expected it to continue growing forever. As with any other consumer electronic item, there are only so many households willing and able to own a game console (poor people are less likely to own a console, as are people born before 1960), and it's clear that consoles (or at least conventional consoles) have reached a saturation point. Stable sales are not shrinking sales, and the lack of growth should not be viewed with alarm.

In Europe, the PS4 is already the second best-selling home console ever in the region, behind only the PS2. It will probably end up somewhere in the 45-50M range. The XBO is running well behind the PS4, but should end up at around 14-16M. So, we're talking around 60-65M conventional consoles sold in the region, as good or better than combined PS3+360 sales, and about on par with combined PS2+OXbox sales. Again, no indication of a contracting market.

The home console market has undergone a contraction in Japan, but that was already well underway in Gen 6 when smartphones were not yet a thing. However, the handheld market (well, Nintendo handhelds, anyway) continued to do well in Japan despite the existence of mobile gaming, which you would find even less likely given that you would think mobile competes more directly with portable consoles than with home consoles.