I've been reading how Sony lost out to JVC in the VHS/Betamax VCR competition of the 70s and how manufacturers learnt from this by agreeing on a common standard for DVD in the early 90s.

This set me wondring if we would ever have an agreement on a standard for video game development and if so how far are we away from it.

The current 3 players in the video game market all have their own franchises, so surely all three could benefit if any of their games could be purchased no matter which console was owned.

Other features unique to each console could be included by a manufacturer to entice the public to buy theirs, but the buyer would no longer have to consider which games are avaialble for each system, because they all would be.

Any comments or opinions?

uh....never?

With the current players in the market? Never, Sony and Microsoft have proved in other markets that they prefer having propriety software, and stuff, which your suggested model wouldn't allow. Nintendo are probably the same.

Having a single format would probably allow the market to grow quicker, which would be good for software manufacturers - but it would mean that more firms would start producing hardware, reducing the hardware firms current markets.

In short, it would require action from a firm that's not currently in the market, the standard format would probably come out from a coalition from the major software manufacturers - and that will still need to compete with the current hardware firms to take over and change the model.

It would probably never happen. The reason for this is because they all have different believes and strategies and desires as console manufacturer's. Say if Sony and Nintendo teamed up this generation to make one universal console. Both parties could have made the PS3 type system to push Sony's agenda and still be able to use it to play Wii wand games. The only problem with that would be that Nintendo would be pulling in a huge lose from the console where as if they produced their own cheap Wii they could be pulling in a profit. There is no compromise that can ever be found between these two very different ideologies.