Microsoft has released 18 titles in concert with today's world premiere of Xbox 360, with the promise of 25 by Christmas. By 2007, of course, there should be hundreds of titles available, as well as full product lines for Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's DS. Once the game product lines have come into full fruition, what will distinguish Xbox 360 from its competition?

David Cole, gaming analyst with DFC Intelligence, believes that by that time, what may distinguish one console from another - and what may drive its commanding market share - may not be any hardware feature, performance advantage, or bundling program whatsoever. It may be the console that, as with the PS2 and Grand Theft Auto 3, happened to support the one exclusive title that everyone really wants. "A lot of it could come down to exclusive titles that haven't been announced yet," Cole told us. "It always comes down to the games, and a lot of the market could hinge on some games that maybe will pop up at E3 2006, or maybe might not even be on the shelves until 2007."

Chris Crotty from iSuppli sees a number of intriguing opportunities - legitimate strategies that could actually catapult Xbox 360 to the top of the field. "I think a lot of it has to do with the opportunity for each competitor to have the hit content that is exclusive to its particular platform," he explained. "Part of that is good planning with the content providers, but part of it is luck. Because you can't always predict what the hit product will be."

But here is where it gets interesting: Sony's upcoming PS3, which we'll probably be seeing by next summer, will boast the more powerful processor: the Cell, which is the PowerPC's next generation. "On the one hand, you could argue that the Cell microprocessor in the PS3 is more powerful," Crotty proposes, "but on the other hand, the reports are that being more complicated and more powerful is also a detriment...Because the Cell is so powerful and so complicated, that naturally results in a higher degree of complexity to develop content for the PS3. So therefore you could argue that the Xbox 360 may have a slight advantage in that it's easier for content providers to develop new and different types of games for the platform." PS3 games may end up being more resplendent after all, he argues, but that might not help Sony too much if there are fewer of them to go around.

On top of all this, Microsoft is well-known for already having an edge in building development tools. And it already knows how to make the most of supporting an architecture whose performance is arguably not what it could be, as is often put forth with regard to the perennial contest between the x86 architecture and Macintosh. But Macs are still more expensive than x86 PCs; and PS3s will certainly be more expensive than Xbox 360...Maybe this is more of an optimum situation for Microsoft after all, more so than Sony might be comfortable with.

Oh yes, and there's just one more thing. Of the two big game manufacturers today, which one is the platform company? And which one knows the most about leveraging platforms to its competitive advantage?

Which brings us to the final piece of the puzzle, perhaps the cornerstone: Xbox 360 leverages Microsoft's growing Internet platform, using Xbox Live to build its core audience into a colossal community. This gives gamers, says Matt Rosoff, access to "a consistent online experience, voice in every game, consistent identity." When an Xbox Live member attains a game's scoring or achievement goals, he points out, those goals are good towards credits which gamers can cash in on. And besides the solid economic platform, Xbox live provides an equally solid transport platform, from the network perspective, creating "tie-ins to other Microsoft services - I could see it tie in more closely with Windows Live Messenger. It could exchange more types of voice and text messages with people on their PCs. I really think that's the big differentiator, the online story... I don't believe Sony is building a competitive service to Xbox Live right now.

"You could almost argue that Microsoft is building an alternate Internet," Rosoff proposed, "only accessible from a closed game console. That opens all kind of interesting possibilities. You could talk about media companies being more willing to release their catalogs to an Xbox Live type service, because it's a closed environment, and you're not going to have people ripping the DRM off of it and posting it on the Internet, because it's harder to do from a game console. So I think Microsoft has an underappreciated asset in Xbox Live, and they've already built it out. That investment is done."

So the opportunity clearly exists, the pieces are all in position, and Microsoft enters not only the holiday season but the coming year with the bases loaded. These facts, coupled with Sony's fighting off an image problem in the wake of its namesake music publisher being associated recently with mass-distributed malware, could very well promote Xbox 360 to the prominent position among consumer game systems, making it the envy not only of every PC owner but every PC manufacturer. It's not exactly a likelihood or a probability. But this scenario may very well have just emerged from the realm of fantasy.