In a war, the winners are usually the suppliers of the armaments. The console war is no different. Several of these "arms suppliers" for the consoles have already been known to benefit, like IBM Corp and GaN laser diode makers.

Another party also benefits from the console war: HDTV manufacturers. According to research from Frank N. Magid Associates, 28% of those who bought an HDTV last year did so because they wanted to take advantage of the hi-def capabilities of their consoles.

In case you were curious, 5.5 million households bought an HDTV for the first time for the 2007-2008 holiday period. 28% of that will be somewhere in the vicinity of 1.5 million. That's a lot of hi-def gamers out there. No data on how many of those are Xbox 360 gamers or PlayStation 3 gamers though.

With this data in mind, it won't be surprising if the next generation of consoles will have full support for HDTV straight off the bat. Sony, who won the format war with Blu-ray, will likely be happy with this news as they have a large stake on both the console and HDTV market.