sonycowboy said:If they do (or more correctly, when they do), it will be because of mostly first party titles. Most publishers are not going to fully commit to the next generation until the PS3 launches. The XBoxNext will get some great games, but there will be a distinct lack of "next generation" 3rd party support. Although, I don't agree with him much, MP also expects muted support, mostly for publishers financial reasons.
I think the whole idea Microsoft has... is to leverage XNA. If Xbox 2 really takes off a whole year/year and a half before PS3, developers will start concentrating on Xbox 2 titles and possibly scrapping PS2/GC ports on multiconsole titles because of the vast difference in detailing. Of course there are the companies that will do the low-res models/textures and have a COMPLETELY different engine. which in turn would start lowering the game count on PS2, and could adversely effect the populations mind on where to get the good games.
Then what happens is PS3 comes out, and looks a TINY bit better and people already have their Xbox2, people are already enjoying themselves with some great next-gen games. (remember analysts themselves are saying next-gen graphics are going to look so similar that buying one over the other because of such would be silly)
Though this would be like a whole chain of events, and I think it's possible it can be pulled off. It's going to be really interesting how this all plays out.