| dolemit3 said: See for yourself: Generation 5 had five main competitors: Atari Jaguar, 3D0, Playstation, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64. Generation 6 had four entries: Dreamcast, Playstation 2, GameCube, and Xbox. Generation 7 currently has three consoles: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii.
It looks like we will end up with only two consoles in the next generation and my guess will be: Wii 2 and Nextbox with Sony taking sometime off and will probably simply shuffle the PS3 into a slimmer model. The decrease in the number of consoles is probably due to skyrocketing cost of participating in the console race -- we are talking billions of dollars with a very high risk of big losses. |
Three examples, with arguable inclusion criteria? This is hardly a historical pattern, more like a forced result.
The failure of Atari, and Sega, were not predetermined, but caused by very specific events, that could happen again, or not.
I think there is a 10% chance for a comptitor's exit, and it is more likely than not that it will be Microsoft.
They are not even a traditional gaming company (Sony has longer gaming roots). They only wanted to win the living-room-multimedia-center-war, lost a lot of money while trying so, and even failed the format war, they don't have no intention for releasing a new xbox with a blu-ray player.
Maybe they will try an OnLive-style system, but it could be PC-Windows based as well.
