Weird, I said something similar (but not as inflammatory) on the David Jaffe thread.  Don't question my professional analytic skillz!

Sony is actually in a better position than before. Sony this gen put a ton of tech into the PS3 and it is paying off. 3D is the big item right now and they are the only conole that supports it. Having BD and DVD playback standard as well as Bluetooth for periferals and full 1080P support puts it ahead of the competition. The price started high and is still higher then the rest however it has done a very good job catching up to the 360 who launched a year before it. While software is an advantage to Microsoft, you need hardware to run it. Generally speaking hardware is developed first then the software is designed to utilize the hardware, not vice versa. Sony has always pushed in this aspect and if the NGP is any indicvation, they will continue to do so. We are at least 10-20 years away from consoles posibly going away and streaming our games. Internet is still far too slow, not available everywhere and with bandwidth limitations on a number of services, isn't exactly a viable option for most people. Hardware is where its at. Sony will continue to make the Playstation brand a center piece of a home entertainment system . If anything and I have said this before, Microsoft will abandon the console market and concentrate on publishing games. It would honestly be in both Microsofts and Nintendos best interest to due so considering they have no other hardware aside from a console. Sonys device has many functions outside of gaming that make it appealing and help to drive down costs for the company accross multiple divisions.

nintendo has become a laughing stock to the "core" gamer.

sony is plagued by terrible marketing and unimaginative designs.

microsoft has next to no first party to create compelling software.

...all three are really in a weak position if you ask me.  next gen could go to any of them or even someone outside of them too imo.

better :)

Just on the bolded comment ...

Nintendo has (at least claimed to) designed each of their systems around the software ideas of Shigeru Miyamoto; which is why the core system Nintendo releases rarely is "over designed" with functionality that is never taken advantage of.

I really don't see how Sony is in a bad position, software wise ps3 is picking up steam like never before and it's been outselling 360 by about a million every year and 360 is dying off, and Sony is the only one who could get away with full support of their current gen console for another 5 years, I'm not certain they will but I think they could, the gap isn't going to be as big as it was previously gen to gen and ps3 is significantly more powerful then the 360 and the wii so yeah, and MS is a horrible position for next gen, timed exclusives and failrate issues with be on everyones mind, will that game stay exclusive? Will my console break down in 3 months? Are some question people will be asking when considering the next xbox 

Sony is doing better now than anytime during this generation. The PS3 is actually bringing them money now. 

i can believe you if you are speaking only of the DS, wiimote, balance board, and motion plus...

...but the NES, gameboy, snes, gameboy advanced, n64, gc, and 3DS.

I would argue that Nintendo is a videogame developer with a very distinctive view of what the direction of the videogame industry is/should be; and as a result their greatest weakness is that they're often at odds with third party publishers/developers who have a drastically different view of the market.

Sony is a hardware developer, and their focus is on producing the "best" hardware in a very limited and linear interpretation of what makes hardware better. You can expect a very advanced feature rich system, but it is often unimaginative and can be lacking in ways that did not fall into the engineer's definition of "best hardware"

Microsoft is a service company, and uses ease of development and technical support to sell their hardware to developers while trying to sell additional services to the gamer through the system. This also tends to be not extremely imaginative, but their focus on developers does lead to a significant attempt to meet their needs; and also leads to gamers being treated like "cash cows" to be steadily milked. To make matters worse, it usually takes people a long time to adopt to services and by the time people care that a service exists your competition may have adapted. As an example of what I mean, Online gameplay is a very important feature for a minority of gamers but has not become a particularly important service to most gamers yet; and even Nintendo (a snail in the race to online gaming) will probably have a service most people deem adequate by the time it becomes a very important feature for most gamers. The same will (probably) be said about digital distribution and social networking services provided by consoles.

Hes clearly not aware of what Sonys been doing lately.