IF one of the 3 hardware makers were to get out of the industry...

[alpha_dk]

I was under the impression that part of the contract EA has with the NFL for exclusivity requires them to produce games for all actively sold consoles (or something along those lines).

Wouldn't that alone make it infeasible for EA to enter the hardware business? Because either they get rid of their stranglehold on the NFL, or they lose their killer app. And they'd have to tread *very* carefully when it came to making the games for the other consoles... if they purposely made them shitty then they would likely be in trouble from the NFL and/or anticompetitive business practices.

Then again, I personally don't think there's a company desperate enough to try to enter this market as it is, anyways (even if a non-Nintendo party dropped out). When you look at development costs for a new console coupled with the fact that Nintendo's next console will be the successor to such a breakaway hit (say what you will about brand not meaning anything, thats a *lot* of people who will likely grow to love Nintendo's IP this generation). I think that if another company enters the market, it will likely be in the generation after the Wii2 - that;ll be the first generation I think someone would likely have a shot at going anywhere (by tapping into a new blue ocean perhaps - Nintendo themselves have said that it was their market position with Gamecube that let them see the untapped market around them).

All in all, my predictions are:
This gen:
MS, Sony, Nintendo all stay in, Wii = breakaway hit, PS3 and (25% likelihood, for the entire xbox line) 360 in the black by the end of the generation.
Next gen:
All three companies start the generation, and either Sony or MS pulls out, making it a 2-company race. Final numbers are about 55/45/5% for the three companies (I am not going to predict who will pull out or who will lead, but the generation I feel will be closer than they have been in the past because all companies will be trying to out-innovate each other in non-gfx ways, leading to the consumer winning!)
Gen after that:
Whichever 2 survive the previous generation. If another competitor enters, it will be here, and it will be early.