A lot of good points that he makes, and I'm in agreement with much of it, but the soda industry isn't exactly comparable to the games industry. There's a variety of reasons for which a decent bit of competitive success for both platforms is in the overall best interest of consumers, chief among them being due to the unique investments and risks that are involved with major, first party game development. I would make the argument that, past a certain point, other industries as an analogy to the games industry lose merit as a point of comparison. And even beyond that, it doesn't always benefit the consumer if the gamers who went with the "wrong" console end up paying for that decision in terms of the quality of third party support, or if it somehow gives the platform owner pause with regards to investment into their first party efforts. If there are to be sacrifices in that regard, then let it be for reasons outside of the fact their product simply isn't selling well enough to justify the investment.
There are times indeed when one platform has every right and claim to rule them all, but I'm not seeing that with the PS4 and Xbox One. I see no legitimate reason for either console to destroy the other so badly that the other one is considered a failure. Contrary to all the PS3 doom and gloom, that platform was far from the failure for Sony that it's often portrayed as being. Sony had some problems as a result of their decisions with the PS3, no doubt that, but in the end the platform performed at such a level that it ended up being to the benefit of the entire industry as a whole. Developers were able to sell more games, PS3 owners can't say they were shortchanged or screwed, both 360 and PS3 owners had a great generation, unless you were a fanboy that wanted total world domination for one or the other side, and hoped to extract pleasure from seeing the other crash and burn.
There's no good that will come from the Xbox One not being a legitimately competitive alternative to the PS4. I believe it to be that promising of a games console and an overall product. That doesn't mean it has to sell neck and neck with the PS4, but it also can't be a sales flop, either, if you get my meaning. The Xbox One, and the potential it has as an overall entertainment device, is exactly the kind of videogame system I want. I also especially like the television features and integration. I love that a videogame console and it's interface is so connected to my TV viewing. I find it extremely cool that I could be watching Rachel Maddow on MSNBC one minute, then with a simple hand gesture or voice command, have it merged or collapsed into my game console experience. A system that tries to be more than just what we've come to expect from a videogame console is precisely what I think a next gen console should be. Because the game side and OS application side are so separate and off to themselves in the systems design, they can both continue to be built upon and upgraded in ways that we've never seen from a videogame console before, because whatever you did on the OS application side would be a major risk to whatever needed to happen on the game side. That's one of the cooler, less talked about parts of the Xbox One that I think a lot of people are really overlooking. There's much increased reason to be excited about what Microsoft has planned for BUILD and what the future, major updates to the Xbox One will be, thanks in large part due to the way it's built with the hypervisor and multiple virtual machines. People may not buy the notion that Microsoft have the right idea with the Xbox One, but I think they do, even if they had to make sacrifices to raw graphics performance to get there. Microsoft, with every console they've released thus far, have taken important steps to push the industry forward and, in my opinion, change it for the better, and Sony has responded to that competition and have accordingly improved their own systems for the better, also making some moves that I'm certain Microsoft haven't ignored. I'd bet anything that if the Xbox 360 didn't find the market that it did, Sony might never have been so aggressive in improving their online services and infrastructure. It may not be anything even close to what it is currently without that competition, because the message would have been sent that there is no significant market for that kind of thing, and so they are just fine staying the current course, which is exactly what would have happened without a meaningful threat from the Xbox 360.
One clear superior option can also be good at times, but I don't think that this is one of those cases. Both the PS4 and Xbox One must be real and serious competitive alternatives to one another, and deserve to be successful. That doesn't mean that they have to be more or less identical sales wise, but they both need to sell quite well, and what's happening so far is very promising. It doesn't matter if the PS4 ends up being a big sales winner, so long as lack of solid sales doesn't become a serious issue for the Xbox One that it impacts the quality of games that come to the platform from both third and first party sources, and it doesn't end up dissuading Microsoft from taking some of the good ideas from the Xbox One and incorporating them into even better future Xbox consoles. Hell, it isn't even a stretch to say that an unsuccessful Xbox One stint could place at risk the Xbox brand as a whole. Now, I know that probably excites some people, but it doesn't excite me at all, and it shouldn't excite gamers or developers.
