Wasn't the same said of Microsoft and Sony?

sony has strong legs due to continued ps2 and psp sells. Also, each ps3 earns them both a gamer and blu ray user.

Nintendo has 0 competition in both home and handheld consoles when it comes to casual/non gamers so they got some legs too.

MS gave up on the origanal XB very quickly (only 4 years) and they weren't able to get many HD attachments into the hands of consumers. I don't know how soon it will be, but I feel if a company will go, it will be them.

And yeah, Apple with make a console and/or mac game push sometime over the next 5-10 years.

Sony or Microsoft. I don't know which will be the next out, or when they will get out.

i think they will all be long (as in i dont expect this anytime in the next few gens), but its likely that ninty is the most likely. they are so much stronger in the handheld arena, which makes it easy for them to switch. they are also completely dependent on video games. they have an extremely strong set of devs so they could easily go third party.

sony could, due to a very strong set of devs and great second party relations for becoming a publisher, but they get so much out of having a mass market machine for launching new technologies. i think they will eventually be able to fall back on future psp systems like ninty could with whatever handheld they will have.

ms is looking to make a profit and will spend money until it does, and then they will stay in forever.

Apple already has been offering iPod games since 2005, and they will sooner or later start offering games for the iPhone/iPod Touch and the Apple TV as well. I don't think they will offer a dedicated games machine though.

In that way, they are not a new kind of threat for video games. The computer game market has existed next to the video game market for decades, and mobile phone games are getting more and more popular every year without squeezing out handheld video games.

Gaming will be a part of every new entertainment platform companies will try to establish over the next decades. At least so far, the dedicated video game system could hold their own. It remains to be seen what will happen in the future.

regarding open standards,

Both the Apple Pippin (which was a platform, not a console. Apple never sold Pippin hardware.) and the 3DO (a platform developed by EA founder Trip Hawkins) were designed as open standards systems. They were too expensive and not powerful enough to overcome the proprietary systems of their time. They both flopped.

If MS, Sony and Nintendo would ever agree to give up their exlusive hardware and put out a common standard this would be the end of dedicated video game systems, because other general-purpose devices would integrate those features.

There will be no exits/newcomers to the home console market for at least a decade.

Handhelds will be more interesting, with cell phones/PDAs/mp3 players coming closer to being competion.

It would be interesting if handhelds (with TV-out) replaced consoles, but I'm not betting on that.