Not really.  People are hardcore towards a subject for certain reasons.  When those reasons are little to no avail, you can't be hardcore about something that's changed so much.  Between Nintendo and Microsoft, Nintendo would be the hardcore choice because Miyamato have always been consistant and catered to his fanbase.  And now the Wii has proven that developers cannot ignore it because of its rapidly growing userbase.  Always have "faith" in Nintendo.  The developers have made the mistake in ignoring it and so has the "hardcore" gamer (yes, hardcore is in quotes).

Nintendo gave the customers what they want, but they ignored the wishes of many of the developers and publishers. The developers responded by ignoring the Wii. Of course Sony/Microsoft failed to listen to the consumers as much as they needed to, and they were ignored when someone else did it better. The clear winner in the next generation will be the console maker to give the market what they want. If theres a clear winner in the next generation then its because they deserve to win and the others deserve to lose.

And from an industry point of view, many Xbox fanboys have quote "competition is good" not knowing that Microsoft is the worst of all evils in their consistant pro-monopoly/anti-competitve business stance as proven my numerous of court cases over the past ten plus years.  All public business have to appease the stockholders first, but you let Microsoft take over the console market, they will screw you, the developers, and potential competitors like they have in the PC industry.  Hey, they tried to buy Nintendo and get them to stop making hardware. 

There are also several examples of how they work well with others. For example they control Direct 3d, but instead of dictating the direction of the industry they work with developers and hardware makers. If you listen to some of the presentations they have a fair and cooperative mindset and they listen to what the developers and hardware makers want. They can be too cooperative sometimes, as seen with the Intel GPU/Vista ready debacle. Nintendo in this market hasn't dropped the price, thats an example of a monopolistic practice which all parties would succumb to, not just Microsoft.

Is that competition?  Nope.  As a hardcore gamer, I support the industry, not the dominance of a pro-monopoly/anti-competitve business.  Thank you SONY for initially pushing gaming into the mainstream, and thank you Nintendo for staying true to what gaming is all about.  I love the 360, but too bad it's not backed by another company who believes in competition.  Thank goodness for the sake of gaming that I see both Nintendo and SONY saying in this to give Micrsoft the competition they need.  I just hope the general public will learn and exercise this as well.

The market is always strongest when there is one clear leader. The industry itself has a natural monopolistic nature, because the one console that wins isn't always the one which is the best, but the one which wins the war on the ground and gathers the most momentum. This isn't a market where different telephone makers can co-exist, the three console players are three closed networks. Its like having 3 different telephone companies, but they cannot call each other. So in that market one telephone company will win a majority of consumers.

Yeah, and there are ~6.5+ billion people on Earth (not counting third-world countries or children, who cannot afford the console). It sounds like failing to me, when the other 2 (Wii and DS) are slaughtering the other two companies.

I once heard that the greatest weakness of any power is the power itself...it may be true, then, for what Sony is going through. The PS3 was like a glass cannon by my standards. It has a lot of power and potential, but marketing and price is what is causing it to suffer. That form of power that Sony has is unstable. They've created a machine with unlimited potential, but at the same cost they did not realize that the price and most of the games that cater for the console (mainly non-family centric) would cause it to not sell. And now with the global economy, things are going to get grim for them.

the wii didn't sell 6.5 billion either so it should be failing too.

400,000 for a console of it price its exceptional, even the wii wouldn't be able to sell  that much at the ps3. price.