I took a look at the game console business yesterday - and then I ran across this "future history" piece. It's a decent piece of analysis, including a set of caveats at the end, where the author (Aaron Stanton) notes various things that could muck with his predictions.

I found it to be well written, and very insightful. We'll see how it plays out - but I think Microsoft is the big winner here. Nintendo is profitable in the console space, and I agree with Stanton that they'll stay that way. Between Sony's DRM nightmare, the PR screw up surrounding it, and their continuing business problems, I think they drop to number three.