I think the Wii will be more successful than the gamecube but will still not be as popular as the 360. The PS3 will still win this generation but not until there is a price drop and by then they won't win by much. I see nintendo gaining ground going into the next generation and will set industry standards along the way. Their control scheme is not a gimick and will be copied by Sony and Microsoft very soon. Microsoft will continue to buy up gaming studios and will try to compete with Nintendos first party offerings. Sony has had such good third party support in the past that they haven't been forced to rely on their first party games even though they have been of high quality. If Sony can't drop the price of the PS3 within the first year of its release they will start losing 3rd party developers to the 360 and Wii. If Sony can stand pat at their price point and produce exclusive games that will keep consumers buying their system they will succeed. The only way anyone will buy their system is if there are must have exclusives that will force them to pay $ 600. I am not familiar with the specs for the 360 and PS3 but I don't think there will be any games that can't be ported to both systems until maybe 3 or four years from now. Even now almost every game on Xbox can be ported to the PS2 regardless of how much more powerful the Xbox is. This next generation is all about exclusives and I believe Microsoft will do everything they can to have more for the 360 than Sony will have.
Nintendo is different and will make plenty of money regardless of where they place in this next generation. They will make money on every system sold and will mile their franchises for all they are worth. The DS will allow them to continue to take risks with the Wii which will allow them to differentiate themselves even further from the other 2 systems. I'm interested to see if Microsoft really does try to compete in the handheld market but if they do it my squeeze out the PSP.
What people never realize is that video games are popular enough to support more than 1 or 2 systems. We may see other systems in the next few years that experience moderate success. Nintendo could place 3rd in every generation for the next 50 years and they would still stick around because they are making money. The most powerful system rarely wins anyways. Sega Master System, Snes, N64, Xbox- all of these systems were technically superior to the Nes, Genesis, PS, and PS2 but it didn't matter. 25 years ago no one thought Atari wouldn't dominate video games and 15 years ago Nintendo was invincible. Companies make mistakes and Sony has made there fair share as well. Sony won't be king forever but they are for the moment so until someone else steps up they can sue whoever and sell all the defective equipment they want.
