I believe the war may be over. Hopefully.

In the past, people have claimed there wasn't enough room for 3 consoles. In fact, I have seen editorials that predicted a single gaming system, along the lines of the VHS consolidation. This would help developers as there would be a single standard to develop on and help consumers as they wouldn't get tricked by crappy ports any more.

As valid as these arguments are, there seems to be no real world evidence pointing in that direction. Nintendo is making money hand over fist, every Xbox 360 sold is now making a profit for MS and Sony just cut their PS3 production costs in half, not to mention still making a mint off of PS2 consoles and software. Consumers seem to be happy enough to own multiple consoles- I myself have a 360, a PS2 and a DS.

The only ones hurting currently are the developers who are losing time and money by having to develop on multiple systems. If they could all get together and proclaim that they will only produce games for a certain system they could drive the others out of business. But luckily developers are notoriously independent. I think EA would have to buy them ALL for this to happen.

So is this a good thing? I think so. None of the companies are threatening to go out of business, and thereby leave someone with a console that has no games on it. And they are all competing intensely for their share, which is leading to innovation and more titles than would be possible otherwise. I just hope that in the wake of Nintendo's massive success with Wii that publishers don't kill the goose that lays the Golden Eggs. I am talking about making such a preponderance of casual games that the core gamer demographic is ignored. But with Sony and MS publishing a lot of very good games themselves this looks like it might be a fear for the next generation of machines.

So,

Go Playstation!

Go Xbox!

Go Wii and DS!

Make us proud.