Both Sony and Microsoft have been looking to take a bite out of Nintendo's wildly popular Wii system - and they need the help.   Playstation 3 is plagued by the 'yellow screen of death', where it randomly dies for no reason, forcing me to pay $200 for a new system, which counts as a new sale and therefore makes a poorly QA'ed platform look better than it is, or send $150 to Sony to 'fix' the problem that could then happen again.

Microsoft has a different problem.   GameSpot said the Kinect facial recognition camera system doesn't work properly for some players with darker skin.

Consumer Reports now says that is not the case, the issue is poor lightning, but even allegations of racist controllers could be enough to doom things for Microsoft.  Or not.   George Lucas quite famously responded to criticisms in "Star Wars" that there were no black people by adding one in "The Empire Strikes Back" and the franchise lived on.  More likely, if Kinect fails it will be because it doesn't work very well.