Microsoft.

Surprised by that answer huh?

John Lucas 

All should stay and lean from each others mistakes.

Sony -

Bad - High price point is not a good idea.  Format pushing bad for consumer.  Development Cost way too high.  Potentially good in the long run but if it loses companys willing to make games to take advantage of the blue ray disks,  doesnt really matter as much.  Quality issues (lots of dead ps2, ps1 launchs, sixaxis feel's flimsy)  Too much included that is not necessary.

Good -  Good 1st Party titles.  Copycat tendancies force the originators to stay competitive.  Allows 3rd party add on prodcuts, and upgradability.

Microsoft -

Bad - XBL Marketplace - Paying for stuff that's been free on PC's forever,  Accessory Costs are Idiotic, Reliability and consumer hardware satisfaction.  Power brick,  All heat generating components are next to each other??!!!??

Good - Copied Nintendo Hardware (Gamecube Manufacturing design) This allows for gamecube frequency of price drops (if they wanted anyway), Xbox Live on basically everything. Dashboard functionality implimenting common tasks into the dashboard.  XNA development,  Developer tools.  Strong willingness to purchase what is necessairy to compete, creating high competivie market that should drive higher quality products.  Added functionality to old games (online play)

Nintendo -

Bad - Long term satisfaction with graphics, only company that does not take a loss on hardware to sell systems, thus could've had more powerful hardware at same price if it wanted.  Poor developer support in the form of dev kits (3 month wait time???!!!!???), high lack of online,  Dvd playback could've been given free.

Good - Innovative, quality products that never die (never heard of a broken snes,n64), Large cataloge to make available again via virtual console,  Pioneered, connectivity  (GBA),  Wii Remote,  Correct pricing structure for everything.  Easy to develop for.  Compact enough to not need a redseign from the beginning (ps2 slim?)   Low price forces competition to not get out of hand with their higher priced games.

Microsoft.

who needs online if you can play together with your friend ? Online gaming = less socializing to real world = bad for your live.

LOL... Acclaim or Infogrames :)

(none of the big three should go - competition is good!)

wow people. I can't believe so many are saying Sony. and why? a few because of the price. wow...

it is Mircosoft that needs to go. they have monopolized the OS industry by destroying the competition so what makes you think it won't happen in the console industry? did guys not hear when the  head of gaming for PCs for MS stated that there will only be 1 more generation of consoles? and this whole thing about playing through the PC and 360 or w/e. Live Everywhere is it? i don't kno, but that scares me .

 it is obvious that they are trying to enter the console industry to take it down so that all games will be played on a PC. Nintendo and Sony need to stay in order to keep MS at bay. this is seriously a war now. if MS wins many of us will lose.

I can't believe people are saying that Sony should be out... are ya serial?

Well, I think that no one should leave and the industry wouldn't be better off without any of the particular brands.  There are elements of EACH of the companies I don't like but not enough to say they are 'bad' for gaming...

Personally I would LOVE for it to return to the glory days of Sega VS Nintendo. 8 and 16 bit days were the bomb fizzle.

I'm with you on this one. Simply because I miss the days were consoles were designed, used and competed for GAMING. 

Today companies want to create multi-media swiss army knives with the consoles, of which most features do not amplify gaming as a whole.

PS3 in particular for me feels like Sony is demanding that gamers till the ground for mass multi-media support which has virtually nothing to do with gaming. One can argue the same was done with PS2 in regards to DVD, but the major difference is that there was already a demand for DVD.

I fear for gaming as a whole when companies will make it a continued trend to thrust new, and unnecessary, technologies on gamers. 

If consoles simply become the under-laborers for giant companies to attempt to use a leverage for their other multimedia desires and attempts on obtaining other markets, I'll soon take my hat out of contention as a whole.

This coming from a guy who has been playing since the Atari 2600 days.

umm, why? they came about in what.. 98(ish), whenever the ps1 came out. they followed the same basic structure of gaming, then did the same strucure for 2, and 3. why is that important? if you even say because they first used discs then your wrong. that was a gimick, it was going to happen for all next consoles with or without them starting it. so why are they so important?

Wait, it's definately Microsoft! They stole Bungie away from developing for the Mac. Halo should have been a Mac game! *pet's imaginary Macbook*

MicroSoft.. they dont belong. They joined the console war because they saw that Sony was successful.