I like this pundit style title I just came up with for this post. But seriously, looking at the recent games released for the xbox, ps2 platforms and the games coming out for Nintendo DS. And also looking at the recent development's of the game industry such as the big names (game studios) are going to release mainly for xbox and sony's playstation only and that they sticking to the genres what are working because of the higher and higher cost of producing games will limit this market to be the big boy's playground only. This kind of environment is not going to help the smaller studios to compete with the big studios on those platforms, nor helping to bring out the kind of games that never been done or seen before. I think Nintendo will have small market share and a very different experience in games compared to the other platforms. Nintendo's platform will be dominated by Nintendo and other smaller names and the company is well known about their revolutionary games and that they have the guts to come up with something never done before.
Looking at the coming generation of consoles it looks like that the other two consoles are going to be much more powerful and sexy than Nintendo's Revoultion, making lot of people to dismiss the company as it is going to have the same fate as SEGA. I think this is going to be different with them, somehow they always managed to come up with something sexy to make it a must buy. At least for me.
Think of the Reviolution for example. If they really going to make most of their previously released games downloadable for free, or for a small fee it is going to be a very appelling choice for many gamers. For example I bought GameCube just to play Zelda. I should confess that I never played with my GameCube ever since, but I did not regret that decision to buy it. And I just saw WarioWare for the Nintendo DS, there is something really cool in that game and I see myself in the near future buying it... and I already told you about Revolution. But wait a minute, the game catalogue is something else as well. It is a really great start of doing online gaming for the Revolution, at least it is significantly more than I saw from Sony. But back to the Apple-Nintendo connection. Nintendo seem to be a marginal player in this arena, but they also seem to have a better grip on how to magical and never before seen stuff for people, just like Apple. So at the moment things are not looking too rosy for them, but if they manage to differentiate themselves enough form xbox and ps then they can suspend some of the most critical rules of the market - think about the mandatory loss on console hardware - and survive. So I think I made the decision already about my next gen console purchase. One xbox360 for my conservative half and one Nintendo console for the other half who believes in the REVOLUTION ;-)
You may also interested to read this interview with Shigeru Miyamoto from Wired:
The Man Who Keeps Nintendo Cool.