Game War 1: Nintendo Vs. Atari

Game War 2: Nintendo vs. SEGA

Game War 3: Nintendo vs. Sony vs. Microsoft

Game War 4: Nintendo vs. Sony vs. Microsoft vs. Google vs. Apple

News has broken recently about Google looking to launch their own video game device using cloud streaming. Now, with today's news and a thread dedicated to it here, it is all but certain. The question is, will Apple sit on the sidelines while it's two main competitors duke it out with each other, Sony, and Nintendo? I think not. My prediction is Apple gets in the mix very shortly and we have a five-way war by 2021 at the latest (just in time for ps5, Xbox 2, and possibly something next-gen Nintendo). But that isn't the point of this thread. Let's have some fun with this!

With that many consoles/devices, and two major companies entering the fray, I think many 3rd party studios will be swallowed up or commit to publishing games only on one company's device. If that happens, where do you see these top independent 3rd party studios going, or some other ones not listed?

Ubisoft
Take Two
Bungie
THQ Nordic
Activision
Arc System Works
SEGA
Avalanche Software
Bandai Namco
EA
Blizzard
Capcom
CD Projeckt
Crytek
Epic Games
Konami
Level 5
Obsidian Entertainment
Koei Tecmo
Playground Games
PlatinumGames
Square Enix
Telltale Games (if it survives)
WB Games

Put the following next to each for what you think:
N = Nintendo
S = Sony
M = Microsoft
G = Google
I = They remain independent

If you don't see a studio on here, it is because they aren't major, are already owned by a larger corporation, because they are PC/indie, or because I'm a goober and messed up :)

Playground games is now part of Microsoft.

Atari was pretty much dead by the time Nintendo showed up. Sony vs Nintendo was a thing long before MS came around. Then there's the Atari vs Colecovision vs Odyssey war. Not sure how long that one lasted or if it was even a war at all. Oh, and don't forget the Neo-Geo vs Atari Jaguar vs Sega CD/32X vs SNES war. If that was even a war that is. Or the non-Nintendo handhelds vs Gameboy war.

I believe the vast majority will not be dedicated to a single platform. Any that decides to would be too hard for me to predict

Hard to say how the development game will play out. One thing is for sure though. If Sony and Nintendo want to survive, they are going to have to find a way to make their ecosystems viable products for the basic tasks needed in Home and Mobile computing platforms. If they do not adapt, their consoles will end up in thesame posistion as their handhelds. You have to offer at least the basic standards of the industry.

I eant Sony and Nintendo to survive, and I want native playback to live on in the handheld and console form factor. Right now MS is the only current Console player that has an ecosystem that looks set for the future. Sony and Nintendo have a lot of work to do.

sony vs nintendo, microsoft is losing ground at an alarming rate worldwide.

I tend to agree with you.  However, I'll note that MS has been talking about making XB the center of the home for 15 years, without success.  So, while I think we're going to move past this point where it truly is just about the games, I think it is going to take another change first - the end of the closed ecosystem.  I think we'll end up in a spot where we choose our consoles based on the UI/OS, controller, or something else that isn't exclusive software.   

MS has already started doing some of this on their own.  Going forward, we don't need XB to play Halo or Gears.  They have one of the biggest games on planet earth - Minecraft - on all systems.  They hope we'll choose XB for reasons beyond exclusive software.  As for how successful this strategy will be......

Anyway, yeah, it does seem that MS is playing the long game here.  Nintendo is being Nintendo and doing their own thing (I have no idea how to predict what Nintendo will do, or to what extent the public will like it).  Sony, while kicking ass right now, seems like more of a great publisher that has largely ignored their "ecosystem".   They'd probably prefer that gaming stay the way it is now, as they don't have the deep pockets of MS and Google, so may have trouble keeping up as things change.  

On the other hand, I feel like we could have had this conversation a decade ago.  But, we're still here, playing on closed ecosystems, (in many cases) putting disks in boxes below our TVs.  

In any case, it certainly is an interesting time to be a gamer.  

I'd say the 4th gaming war is Nintendo vs Sony vs Microsoft vs mobile phones (with PC having its own place that is undisturbed). Just look how mobile Japan has gotten and how it's changed the console landscape. And way more people play mobile games over console.

Google and Apple will probably take another piece of the PC gaming pie though I doubt it will change anything. There are services other than Steam that have come to PC but nothing has changed much. It's the phones that are waging war on the popularity of consoles. Everyone has one, but they are 500 to 1000 dollar mobile computers.

Most of the devs/publishers you listed will not side with anyone.
Future is streaming and in that future all the big publishers like Ubisoft, EA, Activision, Square-Enix, Take-Two, etc. will have their own streaming services and they will all keep their games exclusive to their own service.

Each publisher will basically survive or die based on the strength of their own IPs and studios. There will be very little in terms of multi platform titles and most of itwill be from small independent studios. Google and Apple not having anything in terms of IPs or development teams means they have a long road ahead of them, this isn’t something they will be able to solve by throwing money at it.

I doubt Google is really going to make headways into console gaming. Mobile gaming is just a different market compared to the console/PC market and I believe the cross polination between the two will remain limited.

Game streaming will remain a niche for the forseeable future.