Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft. Those have been the 5 main players in the console wars over the past 30 years or so. Atari and Sega have fallen only to give rise to Sony and, eventually, Microsoft.

A lot of people debate whether or not one or more of the Big 3 will be around next generation, but regardless, who do you think will be the next company to step into the game in a major way?

I'm not talking about Apple tv or Ouya nonsense. It has to be a legit console with exclusives and a huge push.

Steam machines don't count because they won't have the exclusive power that consoles have and they are basically smaller, cheap pcs.

There are a lot of companies that have the money.

My personal bet is out of left field...

A company that owns ESPN, ABC, Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar.

A company that has no issue spending billions of dollars at a moments notice when it sees a bright future ahead.

I predict Disney will enter the console wars and, by next generation, be the only place you can play star wars, marvel, or official espn sports games. It's going to be crazy if it happens how powerful this console will be (in terms of games).

What do you all think?

What if EA made a console.

Let that settle into your mind...

"Buy the processor with the fan for the low price of $99.99!"

Pampers.

In all seriousness, I don't think there will be a "new dog" ever.

Disney would seem like a good choice on the surface, especially since they resemble Nintendo quite well in that they go about a proprietary style of business. But Disney does too well with the industry as it is and I can guess they would rather build/progress IP's on a broad base as opposed to a less populated one. No need for Disney to enter hardware just so they make less money from their software, it doesn't make sense.

Samsung, Facebook, Apple. That's my list (likely-hood in order of appearance) off the top of my head for now.

Edit - I would also put Google in there as well, but we should know that none of these companies would want to be in the videogame hardware console sector, its just not their style.

The "C" and "D" buttons work after you buy the EA system Season pass for $29.99

Console Wars Episode 9: The Revenge of SEGA

Google will buy Sega, Capcom, and a few other smaller companies to build up a solid line-up. Once that's done, in they come. Free online multi player if you have Google Fiber. Google Translate takes care of subtitles of foreign games.

Well, that was the 90s.

Times have changed.

Are game consoles really that important in a broader entertainment context for any company other than a dedicated gaming company to get in the game, so to speak?

I feel like even if consoles are still selling well, their overall importance has passed its peak. Sony made gaming consoles mainstream by first making them double as CD players and then more importantly double as DVD players. But aside from those developments, and the fact Nintendo and MS both failed to given motion controlled gaming or device interaction any real legs game consoles don;t really have a lot to offer to the general population and it's really tablets, Apple TV's and the like, Chromecasts and the like, and smart TVs that are going to be the way people interact with the world through their TV sets.

Consoles need all those streaming apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime to try to remain relevant. But they are not the forefront for delivering these things to the TV audience.

I could only see SAMSUNG or some other asian company enter the market. All the option listed allready have an ecosystem, they maybe try to competet but all their options are digital only so far