| Bodhesatva said: It sounds good, in theory. Lots of money, somewhere in the future, and both MS and Sony are after it. But what if they're wrong, and the "convergence" box doesn't really materialize? Or what if they're right, but they lose out (as in, MS or Sony gets marginalized, and the other takes over... or even Nintendo takes over, although they've shown no proclivity towards it) . In short -- what happens if MS/Sony spend billions and billions of dollars... and then don't get that enormous, theoretical mother load payout in the end? Well.... that hurts, really badly. It's a gamble. It's why both Sony and Microsoft seem to be willing to lose billions of dollars years on end, with no clear end in sight. If this were the toaster business, they would have been out so long ago! There has to be a limit as to how far they're willing to go, but it's unclear what that limit is. Are they willing to go a few billion dollars in the hole? Clearly the answer is yes. Are they willing to begin significantly hurting their other assets in order to pump money in to the 360/PS3? I think that's where they'd draw the line, but we'll see. |
Not just the corporations, but the consumer as well. If both Sony and Microsoft both pack up shop, it could create another videogame crash. If third parties are dumping millions of dollars into next gen projects, only to have Sony or Microsoft jump ship, it could spell diaster for third parties, who are already (like you said) barely breaking even or loosing money. All the internal studios would get shut down too. Nintendo may be fine, but not everybody will want to play Nintendo esque games all the time, and yearn for the wiggle free days of Gran Turismo, Halo, God of War and Fable.
