[quote]It's taken as fact because economists have studied such things on the broad scale. If there was only one gaming console (and therefore a monopoly on video game platforms), there would be overall less rapid improvements. The company or companies controlling it would only make it better at a very gradual pace to keep people interested, which wouldn't be hard if there was only one place to go for video games and your only other options were other forms of media like movies, TV, books, etcetera. Granted, if there was still PC gaming there would still be some competition, but as it stands, PCs are always ahead in hardware compared to console anyway, so there would likely be more PC-only titles and Console-only titles as the gap between the PC and console would, if anything, widen.[/quote] True. But economists can't study what I'm talking about because it doesn't exist in reality (except on star trek or at burning man). Proving something scientifically requires observation in reality. I am not so much saying that competitive behavior inhibits progress, more that accumulating money being the end goal inhibits progress. Companies are competing for money, not to see who makes the best games. MS and Sony not allowing cross platform play is more the result of them feeling that it would reduce the profits they receive and users they can monetize...as well as be legally challenging and very costly. Those are poor reasons IMO. But things change so in our lifetime I would expect cross platform to become a reality.