A new cycle starts, and people don't even look at the cycle before it when making predictions... Okay, first off, Nintendo will not make the first move on kicking the next wave of consoles into the market. Why would they? Until actual competition emerges for the Wii (and it can't from the 360 or PS3), they have no incentive to kill the Wii. Once it does, of course, they'll be in a bit of a tough spot. How long do they ride the Wii's success before killing it? And how long do they let this cycle go before they abort it, like they did the last one?
I think the SNES and Genesis highlight the most likely scenario pretty well, actually. The SNES came out 2 years after the Genesis, you see. How many consoles have release dates spread that far apart these days? Whomever finally brings the first real competitor out against Nintendo is going to get some real market presence, but as with SNES and Genesis, it's highly likely that the incumbent Nintendo is going to dominate anywhere that it's dominating now (which is pretty much everywhere).
As for a specific timeline, this cycle's policy is to add 21 to the equivalent event in the last cycle. So first Wii's first competitor is most likely to emerge in 2010 and the Wii's successor is most likely to emerge in 2012. Who will the competitor be? That's hard to call, but I kind of doubt MS or Sony are going to be significant contenders in the market for a while yet. Not unless they really are willing to sacrifice their "hardcore" appeal, as the cycle doesn't hit the turning point back to those "hardcore" values until about 2016. Funny thing about cycles: they're insanely hard to break even if you know they exist and know what's coming next as a result.
Sky Render - Sanity is for the weak.
