You are right. I can see the next console having one hell of an online service, porbably not as good as PSN but good. As for western 3rd parties, most developers will support it, but specific devs like Rockstar, and Bethsada may not (Did they support the GCN?)

The Nintendo brand is larger, and that will help attract gamers gooing forward, but there is still one  problem, the PSP2. Only god knows what Sony is doing, and if the 3DS makes it to stores first, nothing will stop Sony from releasing a better handheld. Just like they eliminated the Dreamcast, they could eliminate the 3DS.

You can't really say that MS has declined as a name brand in the console industry, if anything, it has grown incredibly since last gen when the x-box was a curious item that only a handful owned. Outside of the console industry, perhaps they have.

It really is a coin toss imo. Sony could reconquer, Nintendo could stay on top, or Microsoft could kick the others in the shin and run up to first place. All it takes is a few stupid mistakes ( pricing, reliability) or an innovation that grabs the attention of the masses, for one to pull ahead or be left behind.

As much as Dreamcast fans like to blame the hype for the PS2 having killed the Dreamcast, Sega effectively destroyed confidence in their brand with how they handled the Sega CD, Sega 32X and Sega Saturn. No one (except a handful of Sega fanboys) had any confidence that the Dreamcast would have games being released for it 36 months after it launched, and because of that few people were willing to commit to buying the Dreamcast.

Right now the Nintendo DS is the best selling system ever, and confidence with Nintendo is at an all time high; in contrast confidence in the PSP is not particularly strong. What this means is that it is impossible for the PSP2 to have an impact on the 3DS to have it not be a highly successful console.

Dreamcast had the best opening of a Sega Console I believe and was doing great till close to PS2 coming out. It was a mix of the PS2's and its DVD player and some silly choices made by Sega.

People are way too quick to use Call of Duty as a barometer for how all PS3/360 sales are. That series is an exception to the rule. Yearly sports titles and... big name IPs we have known about for several years may succeed as well....but a lot of "HD" games are bombin hard.

Castlevania, Vanquish, Dead to Rights, Prince of Persia (twice), Dead Rising 2, Splinter Cell, Lost Planet 2, Metro 2033, Darksiders, Nier, Kane & Lynch 2, Alpha Protocol, Alan Wake, Supreme Commander 2, World of Outlaws, Split/Second, Blur, Enslaved, Transformers... shoot.

You can make a case against me if you want, but look at the sales for these bad boys; many of which had 100 man teams, and tell me they succeeded...

Has Nintendo learned their lesson from user-generated games that failed and "core" games cater to a niche too small? I don't know. The 3DS is receiving a lot of core games, and that may throw us all off initially....but that is just the handheld receiving an amount of content that matches its expectations from 3rd parties that messed up royally before.

Very true, I am wrong about Xbox; it certainly has a larger name than it did at the beginning of the gen. I was thinking more along the lines of the combined brand power of similar consoles that will have near identical ports of games. A lot of the games for 360 came as a result of it being very similar to the PS3. Just when it turned out to be more successful, it became the focus over the PS3. It is sort of similar to the reason why Gamecube and Xbox got some quality 3rd party games that it normally wouldn't have, it is because of the PS2, not because the Gamecube Xbox were a good choice for Publishers; rest assured that if PS2 games were not compatible with Xbox and Gamecube, neither system would have seen the same sort of dedication.

Next generation, Nintendo has the potential to be the main console, the one that games are developed for first; and then ported over to the other consoles. This generation, the Wii is a system that either misses the game, or has an alternate B-version created for it (in rare occasions, it gets the A version - like Tiger Woods PGA). Wii also gets a lot more exclusives than other consoles; but they're usually not MGS/GTA/FFX caliber games.

Lastly, with the Wii successor, Nintendo's sixth console; I am expecting an effect similar to the DS to 3DS. When the DS launched, it had almost no third party support; it got very cheap games which were more or less slightly better GBA games. Then it started to take off... and OFF the charts. The sales power of the DS is unprecedented, no videogame system has ever been this successful before. Unfortunately, it also had piracy issues, publishers certainly do not like systems where games can be easily pirated. The 3DS certainly fixes the piracy problem; it can't be effectively emulated and it will very likely have measures that prevent something like pirate-cards (R4) from working on the system itself. it also has the brand name of the DS going forward... It resulted in a launch list of titles that essentially destroy the DS's entire line-up for the first two years of its existence.

Phoenix Wright vs Professor Layton alone trumps all of those types of early adventure games that proved a huge cult success on DS (Trace Memory, Trauma Center, professor Layton, Ace Attorney, etc...); then there is also MGS 3D, Kid Icarus, Resident Evil, and more; it is ****ing crazy! Of course, the games like Brain Age, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, etc.. Will all be there too, they are effectively synonimous with the brand name "Nintendo" and people will know that updates those games will be available; and they're almost guaranteed to be superior (it's not like Mario, Zelda, or Metroid, where level design can make or break the game; These sorts of games can use the original design, with new features and additions, and be seen as worth the purchase; mario kart can use old tracks 16 new ones, and it's the most wanted Christmas gift). This is the sort of thing I really expect to come about with the Wii successor.

• Dead Rising 2 - over 1 million in sales...and still did not meet Capcom expectations. 100 man dev team
• Darksiders - 1.46 million...took 3 years and 100 man dev team.
• Lost Planet 2 - .99 million...barely sold more than half of what it was supposed to with a 3 year dev time.
• Splinter Cell - Both on the 360 are over a million...but it had a 4 year dev time, mid-development revamp, and 4 delays. I won't laugh though. Alan Wake took 5 years and managed only half the sales.
• Supreme Commander 2 - mainly a PC game...but still it couldn't even hit 200k?

I think the issue is that at the very least, roughly third party parity can be expected going into next generation. Given how much publishers have bitched about not being able to easy-multiplat onto the Wii for whatever reason, they should incorporate N6, however it relates to Nextbox and PS4 in terms of capabilities, into their multiplatform development strategy

After third party parity, it comes down to first-party strength, where Nintendo kicks 413 different varieties of ass, as long as they have their eyes on the prize. The question then is will Nintendo developers make Wii games, or GameCube games?

The Sega Dreamcast was performing fairly well when compared to the Sega Saturn, but in general terms sales were not good ... At its peak the Dreamcast was selling roughly 3 to 4 Million units worldwide per year, and the PS2 didn't really have much to do with this.

To understand how badly Sega screwed up imagine if Microsoft decided to stop supporting Kinect next year in order to release another $150/$200 add-on, the following year released a $800 console which they stopped supporting after 3 years, and then were releasing another system. Their competition would have to screw up pretty badly and offend a lot of gamers to even give this system the opportunity to sell well.