Thing is, this didn't really happen. The 360 only really outsold the PS3 in the US and maybe the UK. The rest of the world chose the PS3 pretty convincingly.
The rest of the world actually chose the Wii then the PS3. The illusion is because the Xbro community has such a loud (and high pitched) voice on the internet, followed a long way back by the PS3. The Wii has no voice because it's mainly used by little kids, close-knit family typed and people like me who use it solely for Wiiware and Mario Kart.
From the entirety of one polak that is my friend and has a console 100% of this group also owns a PS3.
I will eventually buy both just so I can take the high ground. Just like Apple vs PC vs Linux, Nintendo vs Sega, PS vs Xbox - the only way to be smug without being a fanboy asshole is to use them all.
Out of my friends that have consoles, the ones that are upfront and unnecessarily vocal about things have a 360, whilst the laidback, don't give a fuck about image people have PS3s. Fact.
Someone should design a simple modular case. A simple one. I.e. all the components come in self contained units (with cooling ports if necessary) so it becomes more like Lego than risky Mechano. My next 'build' will be a pre made gaming laptop simply because I can't stand the stress of building and maintaining desktops, I'm constantly sure that I've accidentally charged something and broken it.
Someone should design PCIe slots that don't feel like you're bending and breaking shit when inserting crap into them. Same with RAM cards, I remember booting up my computer with no RAM because I didn't actually think you have to push the cards in so hard that it makes like dangerous snapping sounds.
They typically have to be proprietary, and then every upgrade also has to be proprietary. And proprietary means the upgrades will be much later than the traditional hardware releases. Selection will be shit and finally, prices will be horrific. I can only think of two legitimate attempts at this difficult concept: xi3 and this Mac Pro. The xi3 (aka the Steambox) is shit. It needs at least another year or two before the hardware can support reasonable PC gaming with this form factor. But even then, it will still suffer late upgrades, few upgrades and expensive upgrades. There's always a price to convenience... But the Mac Pro actually does a decent job at the modular concept. Include the CPU, RAM, GPU and the boot drive (i.e. non-SATA SSD) in the chassis. Then let every other upgrade connect through an industry standard, Thunderbolt in this case. When you build a computer, your CPU, mobo and RAM are kinda stuck together in the build cycle. You don't upgrade one without upgrading the others. Soon, I believe the SSD will be added to this group as capacities creep upwards. Once you hit 500GB, why upgrade your boot SSD before you upgrade your entire machine? GPUs are a curious one and gamers would definitely want to be able to upgrade their GPUs more often than their entire machines. Unfortunately, I think GPUs and CPUs have a similar lifespan in the professional world, so the Mac Pro was probably fine in permanently including the GPUs. But storage and disk drives? Monitors? Speakers? That shit oughta be modular. And since Apple is butt buddies with Intel, they used Thunderbolt, which is a fuckload more standard than anything from Xi3. And they included 3 goddamn TB controllers!!! That's six TB ports. And there will be a premium for every damn Thunderbolt accessory. I'm not even surprised that Apple loves Thunderbolt. So as an ironic tl;dr, Apple's modular desktop is a fuckload more modern, open and useful than Gaben's overpriced gaming computer. A more practical shape would've actually been a triangular prism. That unified heatsink is pretty fucking brilliant if you ask me. That's kinda how dual GPU graphics cards are made. It's a really efficient way of cooling multiple hot things that are really close together. I'm surprised they stretched the design to three hot chips. I'm doubtful that it could be extended to four (as in a second CPU), but what the fuck do I know? And the curve let them have room for RAM and NAND. So Apple's form is actually very functional in this case. It reminds me of the Silverstone FT03, a favorite case of mine. Not as strikingly efficient as the Mac Pro, but pretty fucking ambitious for a miniITX case. It also supported two GPUs. Apple causes evolution from subhuman into actual human? I kid, I kid. This post makes me feel like a fanboy enough as it is, lol.