Not sure you noticed a little company known as Nintendo exists too... it has been around for a few decades now. Would hardly be a monopoly, now would it?

Bringing back the days of PS1 and PS2... oh no... what a dreadful thought you conjured. /s

It's the no Idolm@ster effect. It will be worse than 360 by far.

I think today's console market would be doing well even with only two competitors. Hopefully, MS shareholders will soon realize that it's senseless to throw away all that money into a bottomless pit.

This tragic disgrace today should be enough to bring division closure talks back to the table.

it would be a monopoly in case of AAA "multiplat" franchise

wii u wont magically get more powerful and/or get third party support

At Yodobashi Camera in Yurakucho, a single customer waiting to buy the Xbox One when the store opened was reported to be outnumbered by a group of journalists there to cover the launch.

I agree... the way Xbox has been competing has hardly done any good to the industry. Throwing money at already made/published games with the sole purpose of keeping them from the competition (Tomb Raider recently, Mass Effect 1, Titanfall, etc) does absolutely no good for consumers. Take industry talent and create your own exclusives, games that wouldn't exist otherwise, now that would be a worthwile endeavour and one that could actually justify the continued MS presence in the console gaming space.

So yeah... selling the division off to a possible competitor that has a different approach might be the way to go. I doubt they will close shop during this generation though, they might as well push through and try to recoup some R&D money.

Wii U has actually been selling pretty well in Japan lately. Not amazing numbers, but solid for Japan.

You are probably pissed at Bloodborne, No Mans Sky and Sunset Overdrive as well. Both companies do this.

You don't need 2 consoles to be equally as powerful to have competition. Console power disparity has always been a thing. If you go back to the good old N64/PS1 days,  you would have a true reason to own 2 different consoles as the experiences provided by each of them were so completely distinct. The fact that one was pushing the CD format while the other was still on cartridge would be a prime example of the different approaches.

There would be very little overlap between games going multiplatform between those 2 back then and even Sega was producing their own titles.

You would coexist classics like Goldeneye, Mario 64, Star Wars Shadows of the Empire on the N64 with games like Final Fantasy 7, Metal Gear Solid, Suikoden, Castlevania SOTN, etc.

Really try to think about what would change if Xbox was no more. Do you really think that all of the games you may point out as exclusive wouldn't be coming to the PS4? Do you think Insomniac wouldn't make Sunset Overdrive? Do you think Capcom wouldn't bring Dead Rising? Do you think Ryse would ever be made as a kinect on rail game and then last minute changed to take normal input controls?

As for Nintendo, they don't need to be more powerful or push the envelope technologically, they never did that and I suppose never will. They have fantastic talent creating real exclusives that milions of people enjoy and will buy regardless, not to mention they are the reason handheld gaming exists at all. They don't need to have more powerful hardware or sell as much as Playstation to be profitable and keep doing their thing.

Bloodborne is made in cooperation between From Software and Sony Japan studios.

No Man's Sky is an indie game made by a team of 3 (i think they are 3 people only, could be 5 though) and they can only work on 1 platform at a time, guess which one they would pick, the one selling record numbers or the one being constantly hated since the E3 2013 debacle?

Sunset Overdrive is the perfect example of the paid exclusive that MS got and would obviously get made regardless.

Counter example would be Bayonetta 2, which the developers mentioned plenty of times that if it wasn't for Nintendo's funding, the game would never be made in the first place.