It's not that sony didnt want to make profit....it's that they saw and still see a winner w/ the blu-ray brand, that they can make a large amount of $$$ b/c the movie market is huge, and the demand for the blu-ray games will be huge as well.  So, Sony saw that HDTV players would just be a few hundred while its Blu-ray players would be $400 for a while.....Sony decided to sacrifice the PS3's profits for a few years so that it would win the format war for Sony.  The fact that Sony is getting its various divisions to do something that they haven't done for quite a while, to work together, is a big strength because this will help the company make more profit.    In terms of your post, you sound like you are comparing apple and Sony's profits, market success, etc.  Well, made a premium product that imediately sold well because there wasn't anything else like it.  Sony made a premium product that didnt sell well at first because it had to jack up the price, which it would not have had to do if the blu-ray drive was just a dvd drive.  So, you really can't compare the two companies...

I only hope Nintendo won't be retarded on hardware as usual -_-

Ninty will probably do the same thing that they did this gen.....build a cheap console with their award winning motion control, throw in a lot of casuals and mario. Motion control games are usually more casual so I expect ninty to have another casual oriented kind of console.

Yes, as always, there's that "anything is possible."

However, I think it's pretty clear Nintendo's chances are higher than that of its current competitors.

As for competition in hardware leading to better games, I disagree. The Playstation dominated gens weren't exactly poor, if one favors the 16-bit era it's likely due to the type of games (2D) rather than the quality. Besides, many of the great SNES titles had nothing to do with competition with Sega, seeing as how the Genesis / Mega Drive was irrelevant in Japan.

Really, though, why do we want 3 consoles tied in the race? It means we need to buy hardware for all 3 to get the games we want (controllers included), and worst of all, the online is segregated for multiplat titles. Nothing sucks more than having to choose between which half of my friends I want to be able to play Modern Warfare with...

It's fine (or preferable, even) if a console holds 70% of the market share. It just means the competition is in the software. It'd be awesome if I had more money to spend on great games, instead of more controllers...

The biggest questions that I have are:

-I assume that the next Xbox will have Blu-ray but will the next Wii? This will make for a more expensive consle somewhat
-Will Natal have bombed yet? I assume so
-Will Sony have BC for the PS3???? If so they will be able to sell a bit more and we just dont know this yet, because Sony looks like it's getting away from the whole Cell thing and there might be some problems with the BC but hopefully sony will see this problem in advance and prepare for it.
-What will MS do to differentiate itself? MS is really the most dynamic company out of all of em imho, they have the most money and make the biggest events out of nothing. They can have a price cut on a dime if the others cut. I'm also expecting some exiting moves from MS but my head says that they won't dominate to the same degree as they did, will most likely get 3rd place for the next gen

This will do as a response. I'm not exactly sure how "48 v 29" or "48 v 23" is a tie in any form. Rather than the Wii marketshare dropping, the PS3 is slowly eating away some of the 360 share. The Wii has been sitting just under 50% for 2 years now.

...

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if there is no PS4 released.

nah i think the Apple Pippin 2 Might destroy Wii 2 Xbox362 and PS4 all combined

Actually Next gen will probably have a much bigger divide between the companies, Sony is still losing money, and probably will for quite some time, their projections for getting back to profitability are too rosy and too dependent on technology unlikely to be a success in the short term, so by next gen, they'll be on the brink of financial collapse. I could see the PS4 pulling a Dreamcast.

MS will have more success, but they are likely to remain a distant second place next gen partly due to their Japanese weakness.

In addition the disruptive trends set in motion this gen by Nintendo will have likely run further by then, EA, THQ and a few other big publishers will likely be gone

Yes, after all the analysts were completely right about this gen /sarcasm

 As if some random person on a forum would be better.  I mean people around here support the console that they own, end of story so their opinions aren't backed up by logic and reason most of the time.