What I mean is with Nintendo not appealing to core gamers the last two gens, what we have is a douopoly in the core market between MS and SONY. Not domination by one company like a monopoly, but two. The same as 360/PS3 last gen.

What this means is if one competitor falls too far behind, if it risks losing third party support, it's doomed. So, each company is certain to not let that happen, because it would mean certain death of their entire investment.

So I'd just caution those hoping Xbox somehow goes away, it's not going to happen. MS will cut the price to $199 if they needed too. Of course far less drastic measures will get it done, it's just to illustrate the point. Already you can see MS being aggressive with Titanfall marketing, Titanfall bundle, and Forza 5 pack in. But that's just the earliest beginning. People can crow how bad Xbox is being beaten, or that it's already dead...but it's March. MS will take their sweet time in the scheme of things. They might not cut to $399 until say, September. So people will say for March, April, May, etc that Xbox is D000med as the sale figures roll in...but it's meaningless, it's a short term view with no long term ramifications. It's no more doomed than when PS3 sold incredibly poorly in early 2006.

Another thing is people dont realize, even a healthy 2nd place just in the USA and UK is enough to gaurentee third party support. You dont even need to win those markets, just say do decently well in them. Xbox can do that with ease. Hell it is currently despite all the problems and a high price.

So, the point is the only "endgame" here is the loss of third party support, and in a douopoly of consoles, it's almost impossible to make that happen.

It's far too early to call this a "duopoly". Would you have considered 6th gen a "duopoly" when in fact the original xbox performed just as bad as the gamecube ?

Kill? Sure, xbone will have good support in the west. Doesn't stop it from having bad sales though.

*reads*

You came up with this whole notion to defend xbox?

Gen7 was a duopoly indeed, this one so far is a thrashing done by the PS4 anywhere but in the US and the UK, and after the Titanfall boost subsides, it'll level out there also. Not to Europe ratios, but the PS4 will be consistently ahead.

This thread should be named "do people realize MS will (supposedly) go far out of their way to push xbox".

That may be true unless Microsoft thinks that it is unprofitable and decides to sell the Xbox brand.

The XBox brand isn't going anywhere

Your Nintendo observation could not be more wrong. The Wii U is getting more than its fair share of support considering the sales of its games.

Actually the original X-Box did a lot better then the Gamecube since it actually moved software it still has the highest atachment ratio of any console.  The main purpose of a console is to move software and so far still no other system has done it better then the original X-Box.

Having the highest attachment ratio doesn't mean much when the numbers are pretty comparable to those of the last 7 or so platforms before it. Just because the original xbox has 11 games attached to a console doesn't mean that it blew gamecube out of the water with 10 games per console. If the main purpose of a console is to move software then the original xbox did a pretty bad job considering that the software sales are a total of LESS than 300 million. There is NO damage controlling the fact that the original xbox did just as poorly as the gamecube. 

Sure keep telling yourself that I guess you never heard of Halo 1 or 2 nothing on the Gamecube came even close to being as big.