Over the next year we can expect to see the heat turned up for first party exclusives; this in turn might even end up with us seeing some unexpected developer acquisitions made. Sony has lost the dominance over third party franchises which helped make the PS1 and PS2 the great successes they were, and it’s going to cause them discomfort. Old friendships only hold so much salt in business, and we can’t expect to see many more PS3 exclusives without Sony putting down seem serious cash. With the holy grail of Final Fantasy now gone, Sony need to start getting some must-have exclusives on their release radar fast or fans may start to defect.
Microsoft’s battle over the next year lies in overcoming the formidable (and somewhat irrational) ‘Playstation is better’ mentality, whilst trying to shake the male oriented hardcore image that now seems intrinsically linked to the 360.
Nintendo however don’t have a care in the world, and would probably continue to do perfectly well even if they suddenly lost all third party support (if anything, it’d probably suit them just fine). The Wii may well yet turn out to be a consumer fad, but it’s undoubtedly one that’s not going to lose momentum for a good few years yet. As ever the only issues Nintendo are likely to face over the next year will be factory production speeds.
