| GameMusic said: What? You don't think that some of MS's business would have gone to Sony if they had a monopoly on HD consoles? And "striking distance" can mean a lot of things. I'm saying that in a 2-way race Sony would be in 2nd, but they wouldn't be supremely dominated like they are now. To make a wild guess, in a 2-way race: Keep in mind that total console sales since the Wii launch have been about 25m. Nintendo is capped by production meaning that with Wii sold out Sony would be the only console out there. Would those XBox 360 owners simply not buy any console? Would the 3rd party games on XBox 360 not exist? Microsoft got into the business to block Sony, so they must agree with me.
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Thinking about it, in many ways the XBox 360 not being around could make things much (MUCH) worse for Sony ...
A large portion of the PS3's line-up right now is either multiplatform games or ports of XBox 360 games. Typically you'd expect that without direct competition these games would sell better on the PS3 and the PS3 would benefit from exclusivity, but I don't think you can make that argument. Without the XBox 360 many of these games would be delayed until the PS3's second year (waiting for a large-enough userbase); could you imagine how sparse the PS3's line-up would look if it lost 5 or 10 of the best multiplatform releases to date? How many people would be interested in the PS3 if it lost some of its key third party games?
The thing that is often missed by these "If (a) didn't happen then the PS3 would dominate" thoughts is that you can't change one thing (XBox 360) without it having an impact on other things (third party support).
