This Town's Big Enough for the Three of Us

E3 2010 has come and gone, and once again the internet is rife with posts and polls about which of the big 3 "won" the event. Similar to years gone by, the fanboy has had plenty of material to use to support their champion and to ridicule the others. The idea of winning in video game consoles is a deeply imbedded idea in the short history of the industry. But does it apply in today's world? It's hard not to look at this year's conference and reflect that there really can be 3 "winners" in this game. It's not a guarantee that each company will survive, but they are all savvy and competitive enough to keep the others from running away with the market while carving a solid niche for themselves.

It's helpful to reflect on where we have been to understand this "winner/loser" mentality. For all intents and purposes, it was the Atari 2600 which started this industry in the late '70s. There were competitors, but there was clearly one standard for home gaming, leaving other systems to fend for the scraps of the market. It wasn't competition that did in the Atari, it collapsed under its own weight.

Then came the Nintendo Entertainment System, and initially, it too was the only real player on the block. The 90's then saw a slightly new dynamic come into play, with two and eventually three competitors in the field, including Sega and Sony, fighting for the market. During this time the industry was big enough to have two players, but not on equal footing. One system always seemed to have the upper hand on another with little left for a third. Eventually that reality caused Sega to leave the market altogether.

So for 20 plus years we had an industry that had a "winner" and a "loser". It seems to me that's where this concept is rooted. And it probably helps that after this time, the PS2 was more dominant than any system that had come previously in terms of total sales. So to put it all together, until this current generation, most of the time it was one player who held a lion's share of the market. But even under the dominance of the PS2, something had fundamentally changed.

When the Xbox arrived on the scene, there were three viable players in the market. For a while it looked like Nintendo might be the next to go, but that didn't happen. All three companies survived.

Today there remains a dominant player on the market with the Nintendo Wii. But the Wii does not control most of the market. Combined, Sony and Microsoft hold as much market share as Nintendo. And they've reached a point where any third-party publisher would be nuts not to develop for both platforms.

Consider this: if you made a game for the Xbox 360, you would be marketing to 40 million people worldwide, if you made a game for the PS3, you would be marketing to 35 million people worldwide, but if you made a game for both - now you're talking 75 million. What would you do in that situation? It's crazy not to try to sell to as large a market as possible, so the dynamics are in place to make sure both the Xbox 360 and PS3 remain successful. Then you consider the fact that Nintendo has the strongest in-house software development of the bunch (not to mention the most recognizable and enduring licenses) and it's easy to see why none of these players seem to be going away.

Yes, one company will sell the most, another will place in the middle, and the final one will sell the least. Some will do better than others. But all will survive and do just fine. And who knows, maybe there's room for another player too?

The point is, any talk about who will "win" this generation is silly. There will be three winners, it's just that some will win to a greater degree than others. But of course, in the end, it's the gamer who is the biggest winner of all.

Market data extracted from VGChartz.com

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[Enigma_2099]

... but rampant fanboyism and console loyalty will never let anything even close to equality between the systems to exist.