Log4Girlz said:
This is where speculation comes in.
Many people's impressions of these companies can be boiled down to these generalizations:
Nintendo=Cheap
Microsoft=Hilariously rich and don't care too much if Xbox turns a profit
Sony=Hungry to be mindshare leader
The latter two are conducive to power.
That was all true last generation. This generation:
-Technology is significantly cheaper. Nintendo won't sell at a loss, but they probably won't intentionally gimp it. They'll build what they can profitably sell. This will be disappointing to people who are expecting more, but I'm not sure how all out the other two are going to go either.
-Microsoft is the most unchanged. But I disagree strongly with your point. Microsoft under Ballmer has let some sheer stupid projects through (Kin) but they cannot be a good company if they don't care about which projects are profitable and which are not.
They are still rich as fuck though. If Kinect had failed I think there would be questions being asked by various important people about exactly why they were still pouring so much money into their gaming division, but by the metrics we've seen, its a success. Its a very showy success.
-Sony has problems. They lost a lot of money this gen. A
lot. They care about mindshare, but eventually it becomes a question of sheer affordability. Like Microsoft they probably have people asking "why are we spending so much money on gaming again?" but unlike Microsoft they don't have a breakaway success to point to. I think that the NGP's fate will actually have quite the impact on the future of Sony gaming.