Sony will lose market share due to increases in popularity from Microsoft and Nintendo. As a gamer, the Xbox 360 is the clear choice. It's easily available, relatively cheap, and offers a true next-generation experience. The balanced development environment will ensure a steady stream of releases, and Microsoft's aggressive Japanese investments (Tecmo, Mistwalker, Capcom) will likely help establish the brand in Asia. Microsoft will always have the price advantage over the PS3, and I would expect some aggressive promotions by E3 2007.

The Wii will do better than the Gamecube but will not be able to compete as effectively as the Xbox 360 and PS3 in the enthusiast market. Yes, the Wii is great, and yes, it's affordable, and yes, it's completely sold out. The problem and strength with the Wii is that it's designed to introduce "non-traditional gamers" to consoles. That's great and all, but once you've gotten them excited about the Wii, these non-traditional gamers are unlikely to be as passionate about games as PS3/Xbox 360 owners will be. In the same way the DDR Revolution and Katamari Damacy eventually fizzled out, so will the Wii. It's not that the Wii isn't awesome... it's that the Xbox 360 and PS3 will still be dominant.

The real wild card in this final third of the decade will be the PC. The PC has quickly reestablished its dominance in hardware superior - faster than any other console product launch cycle. As advanced as the Xenon and Cell processors are, it's always the GPU that improves the most quickly. As fast as the GeForce 8800 GTX is today, we know that a year from now, AMD and NVIDIA will have even faster flagship products, and cards like the 7950GT will be even cheaper and more mainstream. Likewise, Microsoft will continue to push DX10 gaming in their efforts to maintain a desktop entertainment platform that's ahead of the MacOS competition.