True, I thought you meant something like last generation with the PS2. But total domination would be even worse for competition, and the companies making hardware, but not selling any units might go out of business, leave the industry or become a third party developer.

Problem is, this won't ever happen.  The realities of media forums is that there's always competition and infighting as to format specification and royalty structure... even the DVD forum couldn't hold it together for the next gen, and we got a new format war.

Nintendo's already said they're not interested in that, and given their history, their philosophy and their culture, it's pretty safe to say they never will be.  And why should they considering how successful they are... what does Nintendo gain exactly in your scenario but less control over their own destiny?

It's still a much simpler way to "unite" the industry than the model youv'e outlined, and it leaves the door open for more and more specialized hardware advancement in the future.

More happy gamers (meaning bigger install base to sell games on. Imagine Nintendo's software numbers if they had double the install base...).

In that case, Sony becomes the dominant console maker and no one else can sell any consoles for an entire generation. What will Nintendo do? Microsoft? What are the odds any new competitors will be able to get into the business?

(I only realized now that you were talking practicallity for the user, not the hardware companies. )

Look up the concept of "Tragedy of the commons".  When there is a common area everyone is involved with, and no one owns or collectively overseas, the end result is that are area (a commons) will end up going downhill and being horrible.  It is what happened with the Atari 2600.  And with the 3DO, the hardware research costs ended up not being covered, or offloaded on the manufacturer, without them getting licensing kickbacks on the software for it.  The lack of quality control does happen.

The hurdles exist, and don't go away, for numerous reasons:

* As Nintendo showed, without oversight by hardware makers, the software quality can suffer.  The PC industry evolved standards, but you have issue with even the PC as a viable platform, due to it not being easy.  This is due to a mix of accessory makers, and equipment manufacturers, who do things their own way.  They do it to get competitive advantage.  When you force a universal standard on everyone, it leads to commoditization.  Commoditization is a race to the bottom for individuals in an industry, because you compete on price.  It isn't a way to win.  It is a reason why you had Nintendo do a Blue Ocean Strategy with the Wii, to redefine the industry, and make a lot of money.

* It is human nature to not want to work with others.  Unless there is a strong compelling reason to cooperate, companies won't, particularly when they compete over the same standards.  They want to have standards map to their competencies.  In the case of standardization, you will force to have a company to compromise and not map to their strengths.  The end result is it doesn't happen.  A company like Nintendo is NOT going to throw out its values it had evolved over 100 years to say thei idea is to put smiles on the faces of people, to one like Sony, where the idea is to innovate hardware, and be leading edge.

* Universal platform to code to is less and less relevant now.  For large budget titles, where the goal is to do AAA production values, the costs are so high, companies work their way around the issues to get the games to work and look nearly identical.  Capcom, for example, has a dev environment they create for one, and it spits out content that works on whatever the dev environment is set up for.  Lost Planets 2 was created in that environemtn.  The financial stakes are so high now, the barriers to success aren't the incompatibility in platforms, but how well the game is marketed, how well the game plays, the word of mouth, and also  the appeal of the concept (if a new IP).  To get an extra marketing push to, developers need to form partnerships with console makers.

In the area of charities, cooperation goes with that.  But, in business, it is to make money, and fight for control of markets.  Sony and Microsoft are doing videogames now, to block each other from dominance that fits their bottom line.  It isn't charity, it is war.  End result, you aren't getting cooperation you would desire, that somehow you have multiple makers of hardware that do innovate, but a common platform to code to.  It isn't going to happen, unless everything collapses, and the likes of Linux rises, and becomes a platform for coding games to.

And they'd to share (or just lose) 3rd party royalties, and possibly even pay in royalties on their own games... I also doubt they'd have double the userbase to sell to, given the vast increase in cross-console ownership this gen.  More like a 25-50% increase.

Really, your scenario doesn't hold much from Nintendo's perspective, except less profit, less control and more politics.  It's not worth their while, at least looking at where they are today.

Well now, who said anything about Sony being the one to dominate? I was vague on purpose.

Your proposal has problems for hardware manufacturers, too.

The only reason to get in on this "coalition" would be operating under the assumption that doing so woudl mean that their royalties over time would be greater than if they were making their own hardware - which is to say, they would firstly need to negotiate excellent cuts of the royalties and they would need to assume that this cut of total royalties would be higher than the royalties they get for software on their own independent systems.

Now in order for that assumption to make sense, one of two conditions have to be true:

1. The manufacturer in question assumes that their own hardware would sell considerably less than their competitors, which is not (to the best of my knowledge) the assumption that any hardware producer makes. Worse, it's not enough for one manufacturer to think this: all of them woudl have to assume a losing position, because the two last-place competitors, if they assume this, would still need to accept that they would come in last, otherwise they'd be better off fighting for second place. If this condition isn't true, then the hardware producer has to fall back on the second condition:

2. They have to assume that a united hardware infrastructure would result in an increased installbase in proportion to or greater than the loss of royalties from having a proprietary hardware platform on which software is published.

The secondp oint here is the reall damning one (which is saying hte lot, because the first point is enough reason to say that your idea is totally and completely unrealistic). THere's nothign to suggest that a split hardware base is what keeps consumers from buying, no more than having multiple car manufacturers keeps people from buying cars. You're operating off the assumption that a split in game availability would be reason for a person to not invest, but that's not the case: a person who seeks entertainment will seek out the entertainment that appeals to them most. It's not a zero-sum scenario.

The only way to expand the market is through software, not hardware or hardware unification. Nintendo recognized this, and it's why they've conquered the Hell otu of this generation in terms of software, hardware, and royalties from both. Iwata still hodls that software is the ultimate solution to the problem of buyer stagnancy, and software (or lack thereof) would be what's holding the gaming industry back. It's not a matter of people having ot choose what they want, it's people not being able to choose what they want in any way. It's why this hardware cycle is so much bigger than the last one: more people are seeing games they want, so they buy the games systems that have the games they want.

You have yet to provide a cogent argument which would sustain the viability of the second condition.

I don't know how, but there is a solution out there. I don't have the know how to say what that solution is, but it's there.

Which is why only the necessary parts should be mapped out for the console. Then the hardware manufacturers can equip it with whatever they want afterwards. I don't know if that's enough, but it's what I have right now.

They all have one goal in common though, and that is to make money. They just have different ways of doing that, and moving more focus to software can help offset what might be lost due to the hardware situation.

And Lost Planet 2 is a good example of how working with several platforms this way can give one group of customers a lesser product. The PS3 version of LP2 has a pretty variable framerate and has no anti-aliasing, where the 360 version has a near stable framerate with 2xMSAA, though with some frame tearing as well. Not all dev environments are this skewed to one platform of course, but it's still an issue.

Well, then there isn't much to do, now is there?

And I came up with an example.

I gotta be honest with you, I don't understand why this needs to be true. Are you talking royalties on hardware? This "coalition" wouldn't be recieving royalties from the hardware, so manufacturers still build the machines and sell them as they do now.

Your car-comparison is off though (as none of the reason I listed for this unison to happen in gaming can apply to cars, or have actually happened, with cars all cars having gears, steering wheel, etc.).

And if all the entertainment they wanted was available on one piece of hardware, they wouldn't have to spend their money on more hardware, and they wouldn't have to worry about what games they can play. And the install base would increase, because you no longer have to look at the market in seperations by who own what machine. Even if this doesn't expand the market in any way, you can still get a much bigger install base by having one console as opposed to three.

And by uniting the hardware, more focus can be put on the software. Developers don't need to worry about platforms or install bases, and so there is less risk when creating software. I totally agree with Iwata that software is the solution, which is why I want to put the games and gamers, not the hardware in front.