Regardless of what business you’re in or what company your with, there will always be a competitive market and people trying to get money.
Wile it is doubtful that all of the current “big three” will be in the business in a distant future, there will always be a company trying to get a slice of the PIE.
Gaming companies have come and gone and wile Nintendo is currently the longest one in existence and they have the hottest console, even they are not invulnerable to the next “big thing”. Companies like Coleco, Mattel and Sega have seen their time under the sun come and gone and not even the “GREATE ONE” (Atari) was eternal. But guess what! Someone was there to pick up the torch and carry on.
With the death of Colecovision and Intelevision came NES and with the death of Atari came Sony and its Playstation. Sega’s demise in the console market opened the doors to Microsoft’s Xbox.
Now I know that not always has the death of X brought the birth of Y, in most cases is the other way around. The birth of Y brought the death of X. But my point is that there is always something there.
All of this makes you think… Would Microsoft had released the Xbox if Sega’s Dreamcast would not have flopped? Possibly not as there was not really a market of 4 consoles at that time, but there are always sufficient players to justify 2 or 3 different choices to fill a niche in the gaming world and unless a crash like the one in 83 happens again, it is doubtful that we will ever have any less to choose from.
Now this is not unique to gaming, this is a phenomenon that affects all industries and as long as there is a market, someone will try to make money form it. So the mere thought of a “one console world” is not only doubtful, it’s unrealistic.
My $1.99
