For a minute, I ask everyone to put their personal feelings aside. I know that is difficult, but do it anyway.
Now, let's look at the fact.
Nintendo now plays by its own rules. Yes, it is in the same market, and therefore at least tangentially competing with Microsoft and Sony, but it's not competing with Microsoft and Sony for the core gaming market anymore. It does its own thing, and is very successful with it. Therefore, it has no incentive to try otherwise.
This leaves us with Microsoft and Sony. The two are locked in direct competition, both with highly similar products, both going after the exact same demographic. The thing about this competition is, it has left us with two incredibly awesome systems to own; Microsoft, at the beginning of this gen, coming off of the failure of the original Xbox, and wanting to undermine the virtual monopoly that Sony enjoyed with the PS2 at all costs, went out of its way to secure exclusives for the Xbox 360, make it fully featured, and basically make it a must own for gamers. They funded new exclusives, expanded on the suite of features LIVE offered, secured new franchises for their first party, ensured all third party PS3 exclusive games would also be coming to the 360, and generally went out of their way to make Sony's life miserable.
This made the 360 awesome to own, and that general inertia from the first half of this generation has carried over into ensuring that even when Microsoft began to take a more hands off approach with the system, it would continue to be worth owning.
On the other hand, once Sony realized that the ground under its feet was rapidly shrinking, it began to combat Microsoft's aggressive moves: it dropped the price on its system, in quick succession, till it was competitively priced. It expanded PSN until it was on par with LIVE, and kept it free, intrducing PSN+ instead as a paid incentives program that ultimately ended up well for everyone; recognizing that no third party would make PS3 exclusive games anymore, it began to expand on its own first party, developing and publishing franchises exclusive to the Playstation; competition from Microsoft made the PS3 as good as it is today.
Sony, however, today stands on the verge of a financial collapse; I know many who want Sony to go out of business, who would be happy if that happened, but that would be disastrous. Not because I feel that console gaming is defined by Sony, or that Sony is the best, or any such rubbish, but simply because Sony leaving will leave us with a de facto Microsoft monopoly. And we all know what a Microsoft monopoly is like. They would never be spurred to try anything, take any risks, do anything bold. We'd just be left with a complacent Microsoft throwing a bone to gamers every now and then while trying to consolidate its position by chasing core gamers (a more extreme form of what already happened this gen when Microsoft was leading Sony, and not even by all that much), and Nintendo being Nintendo.
That's why we need Sony: to keep Microsoft on its feet, and keep them performing efficiently.
TL;DR: Competition is good, and Sony leaving leaves us with a Microsoft monopoly.
charizard1605
As a PC gamer I may actually benefit from Sony going out of business. If developers who make PS3 exclusives no longer had to be PS3 exclusive then maybe they would be ported to PC more often. Not to mention that companies that didn't want to deal with Microsoft or Nintendo may go over to PC as well without Sony. I don't see how I lose.
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