@Spankey:

Here is your answer:

Yes.

One format.

Just like the computer market: PC.

Surely you mean Windows?

Industry would be better off with only 2 consoles. Back in my day when it was Sega and Nintendo the 3rd companies come and go. None of them ever making a noticible impact.

When Sega left with Sony coming into the picture there wasn't enough room for Sega. Sony snuffed them out. Good job. Sega had bad business practices that's why they didn't make it. Either way things were fine. Then MS entered the fray.

Everything seemed ok, but really only because PS2 just dominated the market. Regardless of how well or bad games did on the Xbox or GC the company were making sustainable incomes of the PS2.

However things changed. What we are seeing happening is the effects of the 3 console when more equally matched. Escpecially in the core gamer area. If PS3 was the only console then MGS4 would have done much better, haze, lair... but becuase of the fracture we are seeing that the market realy can't sustain 3 companies adequtly off the core market.

The company to leave the business is the company that cannot take the affordable risk. Nintendo never makes uprofitble consoles, MS has cash to brun. Sony could have followed Nintendos path(unlikely in all retrsospect due to wanting to appeal to the core market), make a reasonable cost machine or take the risk. They took the risk and the system is proving that it's not so sustainable with a small fraction of the core market.

If we expect the HD Power generation to continue one of the companies needs to step out.

No.
Personal Computer.
The IBM creation.

The hardware that changed the world forever.
Windows is only a communication tool for the PC architecture.

@.jayderyu: Excellent post.

I totally agree.

Well, it was always known to be a trilogy...





jk. Chill, guys. Sony will always be in the videogame business, one way or another.

Uh, Pardon? If it doesn't exist then there's nothing to talk about. If it does exist then the article is stupid.

Trust me, work started on the PS4 the day after work on the PS3 was finished.

I guess David Reeve's is doing his job (not commenting), but I'm pretty sure there will be a PS4 - even if it's a PS 3.5 (a probability).

And seriously, why would I want the HD market to be in only the hands of Microsoft?  Didn't work out so well during the dark times of Windows ME - before their marketshare fell below 90%.

Didnt the ps3 sell 400,000 consoles this week? Doesnt look like its failing to me

Poetic justice..

You're joking?

Less participants in anything is worse. 

Have you ever taken an economics course?  Do you know anything about competition, and about how the lack thereof makes participants unlikely to find push forward in creativity and inventive things?  And pricing.

If there was no PS3, MS would not have dropped the price of the 360.  They would have been in second place, by a long shot, and never even fathomed dropping the price.  It'd be no point being that far away in sales.  They'd also not have bought all these exclusive games.  It'd be no point, if they were in last place.  No competition in the HD consoles would mean there would be no incentive for games to be put on the 360 when the Wii is handidly outselling it.  The 360 would be doing horribly had it not been for the PS3 being here.  The PS3 allows publishers/devs to put out games on both platforms, since the combined userbase is higher (right now) and in the future, comporable to the Wii. 

Let's look down the line to 2009 and beyond. 

Wii will likely be at 80 or so million at the end of next year, PS3 will be (hopefully) somewhere near 30, and Microsoft probably at 40 depending on if this is peak year or not.  Now there's no reason to justify not putting a game on the HD consoles, just for the Wii's userbase, but if it was 80 for the Wii and 40 for the 360, where do you think the games would go?  The potential sales of 80 million would far outweigh any sort of monentary return from MS for lower overall sales.  And since the games would be going to the Wii, so would the Sales, and the gap would widen.

As much as people don't like Sony, they are co-dependant with MS.  Which is why neither company should leave the console race.  If either left, the remaining company would be dead in the water.  Which is why it's weird that people are frothing at the mouth for this to happen, because either way, both of the consoles would go down.

Of course it's not going to happen, but the mere fact that people want it to is telling how little people know about business.