Ok, iv been around these forums analizing the market forever. In 1999-2000 things were alot different. Sega was around but with only 14% of the market was largely uniportant. Nintendo was releasing less n64 games and was droughting, but alot of people still had faith in the company. Alot of people were avoiding ps2 because they knew Nintendo would have a superior powered system. You have to look at these things from the then temporal perspective. Then less then entirely expectedly and much to the chagrin to at least Nintendo(which by the way wasn't far behind in the market share...in 9/9/99 nintendo announced they had the majority market share) Around this time there were rumors of the Xbox, but no confirmation. Confirmation didn't come until january of 2000. At this time we werent sure whether Dolphin would come out relatively the same time as PS2.
Nintendo's big trump card was "we will wait and see, and for sure our hardware will be better" This puts Sony at a dissadvantage. However, the hardware card didnt work out.
Xbox spec sheets makes it look like it is vastly superior to Nintendo's system, when in theory the difference in power between the two systems is minimal. As Julian Eggebrecht has said ...you can do anything on gamecube you can do on x-box...you jsut have to figure out how to do it in a different way. This is why games like Resident Evil 4 and Star Wars: Rebel Strike, and Starfox exist on the gamecube. To remind gamers that GCN is really a hardware beast. Sadly we know that it really hasnt been taken advantage of. Back to the point.
This coming generation Nintendo will return once again to having the hardware advantage. From what i'v heard and from what i would do logically as Nintendo..is that they are devloping thrree different models of systems all designed with different pricepoint and power strategies...to counter whatever the competitors are for sure making.
I am 60% sure that most of Microsofts advantage was in its supposed power superiority...which is what drives a bulk of gamers to buy certain games. I'm sure the other %s was Halo.
So, i think at e3......the tides will change. That is if Nintendo does have the beast of the hardware..aned does offer something revolutionary...rather then gimmicky.