Agree, to a certain extent.  The industry will always have a fair bit of power over the consumer.  Nintendo gave the consumer another way, which the consumer took, with open arms.

I'm just curious as to what would have happened if this other way wasn't offered to the consumer

Exactly my point.  The consumer no longer has that choice, because the industry has taken it away from them.  If Nokia (or someone similar) had said forget this and just carried on producing a basic phone (no 3G, no video etc etc) and it was a big seller, would "mobile internet subscriptions, digital music stores and various kinds of premium data transfer like video conferencing." have had so much invested in them?  Would the mobile phone industry be as advanced as it is now?

@MrMe
In my opinion, if nintendo go the way of Sony or Microsoft, the consumer will still take up a new console but the increase in video game userbase will be smaller in general without these "fishes" from the blue ocean. The console price will push these some more people further away.

With lower userbase and increasing cost will push developer into looking for other opitions. In the last gen, a lot of developer are already pulling out red figure in their profit and this will only be worse.

Beside, for nintendo this is a much better opition, if they follow the above, they will be in a very bad position now.

i persoanly hate the idea of an "all-in-one"--mainly b/c the moment that one of it parts becomes out dated the whole machine is now worthless--imagine if they had mad an all in one with VHS? where would that have gotten you-

and Mr i an not disagreeing with you that the wii is a fun machine--i play GH3 almost every night as well as mario and ghost squad--what i am disagreeing with is your stance that one of teh biggest items in the gamming world shouldnt have a say in how games are going to be played and what to expect from them

@mrme

Sony tapped into that market with there first console. There 2nd one sold millions more, there third was destroyed by price AND microsoft attacked them with HUGE negativity in terms of PR. So far it screwed them until a game comes out that blows 360 away graphicly(and gets a review of 9+).

Anyhow, nintendo is winning because microsoft is stalling sony. If microsoft wasnt here, sony would have destroyed nintendo again.

The 360 had sold about 5.5m by the time the Wii / PS3 had come out, hadn't it?

So if you take that figure away from the current 360 sales, you get 10.19.  That how many 360's that have been sold since the lanch of the Wii / PS3.

If you are going to assume everyone who bought a 360 in that time period would have bought a PS3, then PS3 sales would have been 18.60m

The Wii currently stands at 18.52m.  So that's 800k difference.

Even if you add the extra 5.5m to that, it's just over 6m difference.  So either way, it's hardly destroying

@Mrme

I consider the wii destroying the ps3 and xbox 360, 6 million lead is destroying.

@ leo, clearly you did not understand, what you said originally about Microsoft stalling the Playstation was clearly a load of bunk.

@topic.... I would never want an "entertainment hub" myself, what makes you think that is what will happen in the future.

@TWRoo

They came out earlier, they brought better graphics, THEY stole all PS franchises, what do you expect? They did stop sony.

To answer that question just look at DVRs. The orriginal "DVR" was not a recorder at all but a subcription service. And, had Microsoft not bought it and then turned it into an utter failure we might not even see DVRs but a bunch of subcription services.  Also, if you care to look at the technology behind the payed media services the technology is hand over fist better than the orriginal. Would the technology be so advanced if the first one had sold like gangbusters? I venture to say no. Because what sells is exactly what we get. Just look at cars until receintly the technology in cars has been woefully behind the times, and infact the actual motor technology is sill as unadvancing as ever. The same can be said of the iPod it was the most advanced player when it was first released and has MP3 player tech been heavily invested in? Not really. Sure the players hold more but the technology behind them hasn't been advancing, again until receintly.

I think that the phone industry might actually be MORE advanced. If internet subscriptions were not selling but consumer focus groups said people liked the idea of being able to do an internet search on their lunch break then naturally the mobile phone internet failing to sell would mean that people are holding out for a faster and not watered down mobile internet.