Three systems enter, one system leaves. That’s how Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo seem to see this console war; a battle over the living rooms of the world that must be won, at any cost. All three companies have gone to incredible lengths, spent gratuitous amounts of cash and rolled some hefty dice, all for the pursuit of attaining the highest point on the pedestal. Now competition goes hand in hand with capitalism, and the world has seen plenty of risky business ventures before the time videogames, but today’s industry is full of enough gambles that bring up the question, is it all worth it?

About a month ago on an episode of the Official Xbox Magazine podcast, videogame industry analyst Michael Pachter expressed his confusion of Microsoft’s obsession with attaining first place in the videogame console business. Since Microsoft is so used to being the king of the castle in the PC software market, it’s not much a surprise that they would refuse to settle for anything less in videogames. When launching the Xbox 360, the company was so obsessed with getting their product out the door before Sony that quality control for the system suffered, and shortages were so bad that not many were even able to witness the failures. A few years down the road, MS finally addressed the rampant hardware issues that customers were experiencing by increasing the warranty protection for the red rings for up to three years, costing an estimated billion dollars. So was all that trouble really worth a head start?

While Pachter mainly discussed Microsoft when it came to taking foolish risks in order to break ahead of the competition, we all know that Sony has done the same thing. Fortunately for them, their risks have finally begun to pay off. BluRay may be the only way right now, but Sony made the decision to integrate the technology into the PS3 long before the format war was anywhere near decided, and they would have been some incredibly murky waters had the wind blown the other way. The format debacle factors into a gamble that didn’t pay off for Sony at first, since it caused the high price of the PS3 that even many of the hardcore crowd couldn’t justify, leaving them lagging behind the other two systems for some time. Sony is always willing to incorporate the latest technology that they believe will benefit them later on, but they do so at a time when its future on the market can be hard to predict.

As this epic struggle between Microsoft and Sony is being waged, the little console that neither even considered adequate competition has been laughing all the way to a very big bank. But despite the Wii’s incredible mainstream popularity, the decision to say no to new graphics technology and yes to motion sensing can’t really be described as anything else but a big risk. This one, to put it mildly, paid off in spades for Nintendo, but not every unique gadget the company has made over the years was as well received. Remember the Virtual Boy or the Power Glove? Nintendo definitely enjoys hitting balls out into the leftfield to areas nobody thought they would stray, but even they have struck out once or twice while trying to set themselves apart from the rest.