I agree this is a valid question to ask these days.

I will attempt to answer this one:

If Sony and the Playstation falls out (big if), it will be a huge loss for sure. However, the industry crashed after Atari fell and it took their competition with it only because they were very small compared to the behemoth that was Atari.

The slew of low quality titles put forth by Atari at rapid pace caused video game fatigue amongst consumers. Nearly every game disappointed in those final years because everybody was able to publish basically everything. People were 'getting over' video games. In the end, the 2600 had sold ten times the closest competition, even the NES did not manage that feat (62 vs. 10) and PS2 didn't either (154 vs. 24). And they are usually considered to have been the most dominant systems ever relatively. The 2600 was even a step above that, and because of it's near monopoly, the fall of Atari automatically affected the other gaming companies because nobody would buy their games anymore either. Intellivision, ColecoVision, Odyssey2 and the others were nowhere near relevant enough to be able to take in Atari's share.

Only a couple of those companies survived; Atari themselves in an extremely diminished form only to shrink further and further, Nintendo because of their dominance in the handheld market (Game & Watch) and SEGA because of their arcade successes and the Master System afterwards that was moderately successful. Some publishers survived as well, most notably, Activision.

Today, if Sony were to fall away, it would not leave this enormous vaccuum. There is no video game fatigue either, other than the usual 'end-of-gen' slowdown. People are not 'done' with video games. Nintendo and XBox are big enough compared to Playstation to be able to take over their share of the market.

For the record though, even if Sony's financial situation has more to do with Atari's, I still think the actual course of history hardware-wise is much closer to SEGA's. Frightingly close in fact.

But I think they'll be fine in the end .

^^^ Indeed... if anything Sony is starting to resemble SEGA more than any other gaming company, though they're nowhere near the dire situation SEGA was in by the end of the 32/64-bit gen, but Sony could find themselves right there pretty quickly if they bungle the PS4's launch.

Is their a console maker who never fail a generation Microsoft does poorly the last generation but they recover with xbox360 and Nintendo lose the lat generation also and they win this generation why Sony when they fail with ps3(not a bigger fail then gamecube and xbox3600) THEY WIN NEVER MAKE A NEW SUCCESS?

I agree that sony's presence in the gaming industry is more important than sega's was. Playstation has become the cornerstone of the video game industry. It is the most successful brand to boot. If they fall, the industry falls. Sony's competition has spurred innovation and promoted consumer interests. PSN Plus is a direct example of this. Another example would be being notorious for preventing Nintendo from being able to gouge their consumer base for money. The 3ds price cut is proof of this statement. Sony competitively pricing the vita forced Nintendo to react(or rather overeact) with a panic price cut. Same happened to N64 and GCN. No other company has been as successful as sony at overthrowing monopolies(in the gaming market) and without them, I fear Microsoft would be able to edge Nintendo down Sega's path to release 3rd party games on the zune and other devices.

And this year was horrible

You fail to acknowledge the massive profits made from the selling of the ps2 and psp in new markets. The financial crash has affected industrial nations the greatest and since Sony was wise to invest in the booming economies of Africa and southern Asia, they are probably the best equipped to survive another year such as this one.(speaking about their gaming division)

Regardless of Sony's current financial woes, the PlayStation namebrand is one of the better things (if not one of their best) going for them. So for them to get out of the console market would be most improbable. And in regards to Atari, Atari did not collect royalty fee from 3rd party games developed for the Atari 2600. Now, it's just common practice with a plethora of 3rd parties heavily dependent on the PlayStation namebrand. With all due respect to the OP, this thread was ill prepared as a comparison thread.

My thoughts were the impact would be like what happened with Sega, but then I would have to say that Sony is MUCH more important than Sega ever was, and is closer to what Atari was back in the day.  The industry isn't as tied to Sony as it was to Atari, but it is still large. I just posted to see how close people thought Sony is to what Atari was, thus the questions.  And if it is close, you do NOT want Sony to pull out.  I think Sony pulling out would end up sending shockwaves though. far more than what Sega did.  

But, if you think crash, then the problems are deeper than just one company.  It would be industry wide.  And very likely, we are seeing some of that now.

As far as quality goes, if stuff like what Warfighter is, is the norm, I can see there will be quality issues.  Observe this video:

I fail to see how the 360 is a 'bigger' fail than the ps3. 

I don't think the comparison to Sony and Atari is quite analogous. People didn't just stop buying Atari games, but stopped buying console games as they were moving to Computers. The Apple II, Atari and Commodore were what people were gaming on. Plus, yes some terrible games and mistakes that Atari made, like not updating their console and wasting money on things like the ET game. (I was genuinely surprised Nintendo was able to resurrect the console.)

But the biggest blunder of all, in my opinion, is the contractor in charge of the Atari Amiga computer had in his contract that he could keep his work. He had some fight with Atari management and left and thus went to another computer company and out came the Commodore Amiga. Commodore wasn't as good as in marketing, and while superior in many ways to the PC and Macintosh, it wasn't able to survive. Had it stay as the Atari Amiga, computer might be very different today.

Sony really burned themselves with the HD format Disk war. The war was unnecessary, and while they did win, it came at such a cost that it is an empty victory - as they lost so much money. And it gave streaming a chance to catch up and surpass Bluray. I have a Bluray, I like it, but I also think it's a dead end. With streaming, downloading, Ultraviolet, etc. I don't think I will be buying many disk at all. The numbers show I am not alone in this.

I don't see Sony as a brand as significant single item like Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic is IMO still more recognizable than anything Sony has to nongamers and people of all ages. Now, that being said, Sony does had a powerful Playstation brand. But there is no reason they couldn't do what Activision did on the Atari 2600. They could bring the Playstation brand to the WiiU and X720 and just make games. It could be "Playstation on the PC, Phone, Tablet and Consoles."

Having worked at Sony, I can say it's biggest problem is often itself. It's arrogance, not recognizing talent, and lack of ability to work with others creates it own problems. Sony's stock is now in junk status, and yet they are also the 3rd biggest manufacture in phones. They could use a hit on their hands and I am not sure if it's a low cost console, exiting hardware and just making tons of multiformat games, being bought out by someone else, or something new the new head guy has in mind. Especially as it looks as soon there may be another console or two in the market.