no clue about the OP but next gen i'm not buying all three consoles...

I hope so, it would be a lot more exciting then the Wii winning each week! Kind of gets old after a while. That's why the PS3 vs 360 is much more interesting then Wii vs PS3/Wii vs 360!!

Close generations are always better imo (nothing's yet topped SNES/Genesis).  Even still though, I think gen's a bit bizarre as it's the first time the industry split (which overwhelmingly favors 360/PS3) doesn't really reflect the consumer split (which overwhelmingly favors Wii).  It wasn;t like that with PS2, PS1 or NES...

The OP makes the unreasonable assumption that Nintendo will succeed at entering the most demanding market exactly as well, as the other two getting the least demanding customers.

I think Nintendo has much better chances to win the next generation, because they are already full of money, and the new market is ther home, so they can, and WILL protect it at all costs (literally), while the other two could possibly, maybe, if the circumstances are promising, try to experiment with "casual" games, but leave that direction behind if it doesn't worth the cost.

Sony and Microsoft "revolution" would be risky and expensive.
On the other hand, for Nintendo "evolution" is the natural way to go, to become better and bigger.

Next generation's hardware will probably be on more of an even keel too. After how this gen played out, I don't expect Sony or Microsoft to break the bank (ie: take a 100-150% upfront loss) on bleeding edge tech again and I do expect Nintendo to upgrade to an (affordable) competitive "next-gen" spec. Everyone will have motion controls out the box too, it'll probably more closely resemble last gen's PS2/GC/Xbox dynamic in terms of hardware (though probably not marketshare).

Last-gen sales...

PS2: ~120mil
XBOX: ~24mil
GC: ~21.5mil
DC: ~10mil

PS2's marketshare: About 68%

And that's after many years of sales after the competition stopped selling. Even the mighty PS2 never even got close to approaching 80% marketshare.

This tie also happens due to increasing multi-plat strategies from big publishers. Next gen platforms are going to increase hardware differenciation, the way the wii did, to force third parties into exclusive content.

Xbox should be ahead thanks to Natal. Nintendo might try complementarising the next wii with the next DS. And Sony is the one i have no clue about. Considering how they lost market share, brandpower and liquidities they should be the most prudent of all three and wait.

Garcian, is the NES the only system that ever got really really close to 80% marketshare..if not more?

I have to disagree with this statement. Sony and MS have run under the large upfront loss with heavy gains over product end life since they have been in the console market. Not a single Sony machine didn't have a large loss on the console for the first couple of years. Same thing for MS. This is the way the handle the console market. They come out with something amazing for it's release time and as close to a top notch PC as possible so the console survives longer. They make most money of thier money on royalties and such. I do not see them starying from this strategy. I don't even see a way around it if they plan on trying to capture the Hardcore gamer market. Hardcore gamers are very picky about graphics and features.

But this gen they learned the lesson that it's very risky to run such a strategy. Put together, Sony and MS have lost not far from 10 billion dollars from their HD consoles.

Unless they want to severely risk their presence in the video games business, they'll probably tone down their hardware specs a bit next time. Shareholders don't appreciate divisions which lose money for a decade.