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Sony sells 70 million PS3s (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/181791/At_70M_sold_the_PlayStation_3_is_neckandneck_with_the_Xbox_360.php#.UKa46OOe9Ns)

Sony recently went on record, saying that 70 million PS3s have been sold worldwide. This is very close to the number of XBox 360s that Microsoft claims to have sold worldwide just two months prior. With these figures, it seems that the overall console war between the 360 and PS3 is actually much closer than some may have presumed.

Moreover, the lifetime worldwide sales of the Wii are around 80 million, if I'm not mistaken. (may be higher by now) But with the recent lull in Wii sales, and the minimal effect by recent price drops, it seems highly unlikely that the Wii will ever break 90 million.

The PS3 and 360 could easily have another year and a half to two years before their successors reach store shelves. (neither has even been officially announced)  And both systems could still see sales for two or three years after that. (lower sales, but still some degree of trickle) With the original Wii's prospects as dire as they are, it is quite likely that both the PS3 and 360 could make up the sales gap before being put out to pasture.

Is it possible that the current console cycle may end up in a three-way tie?

If you only score by how many sold, maybe.  As it is the amount of profit each has made off their respective consoles is probably vastly different, and very hard to even count

Since Sony was taking a loss from the Playstations for a long time, they probably made quite a bit less than Nintendo. Then factor in the whole red-ring debacle and Microsoft lost quite a bit of money there as well.

If we were going by profit made off the hardware, the Wii would be the easy winner, hands down. It would probably still be the winner even if the 360 and PS3 outstripped it in hardware unit sales. They were selling the Wii's hardware for a profit from day one, and never stopped. By now the profit margin on the Wii itself is probably quite high.

For the time being, I'm ranking by number of units sold, and the directly related mindshare that those units sold represent.

In the two console cycles before this, the disparity between the unit numbers and related mindshare was enormous. This time around we seem to be headed for a much more even competition.

WTF does that even mean? Is it like a boxing match or sthg?
Who TF cares about "a winner"? even Sony or microsoft don't really care, their profits or losses have already been registered and to b honest, I think the pressure to release new consoles is not really a good thing for them (microsoft has shown signs that it wants to remain on the current generation of xboxes).
The two or threee console manufacturers are already well established and I don't think any of them would benefit from one of them sinking.
I don't think there really is a "console war" except for so-called "journalists" who want to sell hype and AAA devellopers who need new console cycles in order to continue selling the same tired MacFPSes and FIFAs and ASSCREDs to the masses without them noticing how bad these games really are, because the dumb players will be focused on the latest technical gimmickry

videogames are the worst

i agree with moi, i think the console fanboy stuff and worrying about which company "wins" each generation is just hype / fuel to sell consoles. i mean, the companies obviously care about their market share, but consider that no console has "failed" in the sense of being unprofitable, with the possible exception of the dreamcast. whether they're temporarily first, second, or third in market share isn't really important, what's important is that they are turning a profit and getting bigger

what matters most to me is which console is the most indie-friendly. so far that's been xbox

The Wii is just shy of 100 mil according to wiki, so your numbers are really off (but the Wii has slowed down a lot and PS3/360 have at least another year of sorta-decent sales).
In terms of profit it's not even close.

Actually, I wasn't trying to make a particular point. I was more interested in stirring up a conversation over the subject.

For me personally, I see this situation as a positive development. Healthy competition keeps companies on their toes, and drives down costs for the customer. A game industry with healthy, ongoing competition between three major competitors in the console space is great. I'm hoping we see a similar balance in mind-share in the comping console cycle. Better for all the competitors to have similar degrees of success and be forced to work hard for their slice of the pie.


Even if taking that into account, we are still looking at a significantly different split. In the last two console cycles Sony walked away with commanding leads, while their competitors either bowed out or settled for a much smaller share. Even if the Wii ends up with a 10+ million edge over the PS3 and 360, it is still a much more even competition.

We've already addressed the difference in profit. It's common knowledge that Nintendo is sitting on a throne of money.

If we are talking about profit, the XBOX "slim" had a large profit margin as MS desgined it to be profitable. As opposed to the previous XBOX versions which didn't make much of a profit from only selling the console.

In addition, you need to remember that MS was making quite some profit from the Kinect Hype. The Kinect was also sold with a high profit margin(relative to production costs).

Sony's performance the last two generations isn't really a valid point of reference; last generation they had the best-selling console of all time (153.6 million total, Xbox had 24 million, Gamecube had 21.6 million, and Dreamcast had 10 million) and the generation before it they had the second best-selling console of all time (not counting handhelds: PSX sold 102.49 million against N64's 32.93 million, Saturn's 9.5 million and 3DO's 2 million).

Although this generation's sales don't show a 'landslide victory', Wii is still way ahead of its competitors with currently 97.18 million sales (and still selling roughly 750,000 systems every 3 months), as opposed to Xbox 360's and PS3's 70 million (that's 39% more sales). As Xbox 360 and PS3 are also starting to lose steam, it's unlikely they'll catch up to Wii sales-wise.

More important than who has the most sales, though, is what kind of impact this generation had on the console industry and gaming in general:

-Gaming has reached a more casual audience.
-Movement-based gaming has become mainstream. (Wiimote, Playstation Move, Kinect)
-Sony lost its absolute dominance over the console market.
-Online gaming has become common on consoles.
-Download-only games, generally made with a lesser budget than disc releases, have become common.
-Update patches and DLC have become common on consoles.
-Additional functionality (BluRay playing, internet browsing, etc) and firmware have become more important for consoles.

On the handheld side, Nintendo maintains its position as the absolutely dominant party, though Sony's PSP made a significant dent, reaching half of the sales of the DS. The casual gaming trend here is especially notable on the DS, and it made touch-screen gaming mainstream way before smartphones and tablets completely popularized it. Online features made similar movements as with consoles, though I'm not aware of patches and DLC yet (correct me if I'm wrong). Curiously, disc-based game storage turned out to be a failure on handhelds and Sony has reverted to carts/cards.

The 'winner' only matters if you're a console fanboy. What really matters is what happened during the generation and how it shaped gaming as we know it today.





also Sega > Nintendo > Sony

i learned from buying a saturn and a neo geo pocket colour and a dreamcast that the first casualty of console war is innocence

There is nothing innocent about buying a Dreamcast if you already bought a Saturn you mouldy old whore.

This is exactly my point. The previous two console cycles helped to shape and define the current landscape of console gaming. And both of those cycles were completely overwhelmed by a single competitor. The current difference of 39% is minuscule by comparison. The PS2 outsold all of its competitors combined by almost 300%

Yes, it's true that the market has changed considerably since then. But that is part of why we have seen a much more evenly matched competition. The "game" of selling games has changed, and each of the competitors involved has learned how to sell their products effectively to their target audiences.

But there are still plenty of huge question marks for the future. A lot of the gaming-centric media seem convinced that the next Playstation and XBox are going to be released holiday 2013. But with no official announcements from either company, I find it unlikely that either will arrive on store shelves until holiday 2014. This could create a drastically extended and staggered console cycle, unlike any of the recent cycles from the past decade. How could this discrepancy effect the console market in coming years?

the wii won the console war with stellar title such as "wii sports" and "wii sports resort" elevating gaming to a new level - strong third party support allowed games such as imagine party babyz from Ubisoft and Petz Sports from ubisoft and the critically acclaimed Chick Shoot from indie superstar DSI games, branded with the official seal of nintendo, the only truly quality assurance both gamers and commoners need. Nintendo REVOLUTIONized the world of gaming with the wiimote, allowing gamers to feel like they are actually in the game - accidents where gamers accidentally decapitated other gamers with a realistic wii sword 1:1 motion were viewed both by critics and the masses by an innovation, finally blurring the line between game and reality. The "nunchuck" wii remote accessory, based on ancient Japanese historical ninja weaponry allowed players to develop martial arts skills, a study demonstrated that owners of nunchuck wii remote accessories were 60% safer even in dangerous urban settings. The very presence of the Wii however made neighborhoods much safer, as it has been used in prisons all over the world to rehabilitate criminals with overwhelming success, creating the "peaceful mario" jail generation where inmates trade mario coins and mario lives high scores instead of cigarettes and makeshift weaponry.
Then the wii motionplus wiimote accessory came into play and made anyone who ever watched star trek's "holodeck" dreams come true. Each and every one of your movements replicated with no loss in the virtual world... Most modern scientists were baffled but Nintendo did it again, after proving to gamers with the gamecube that 3d gaming was the way to go Nintendo added many dimensions to gaming in general with the Wii. Nintendo won the console race, they won the console war... and finally created a console peace. The two "i"s in the Wii do not just represent you and me, the proverbial two people playing New Super Mario Bros Wii 60$ video game, they represent every possible human relationship in the world, translated, simplified by a friend code. Nintendo is harmony, nintendo is a utopia. Nintendo is the future, and the future is now.

I for one cannot hold my excitement as to the Wii U, for bringing not one but two screens to gaming is a never before seen improvement and it will expand the horizons of gamers, critics and skeptics. As I touch Wii U's unique touch screen, I feel Nintendo touching back. It is a gentle, motherly caress. Miyamoto loves me, but he loves everyone. Wii would like to play... with U

-Wii Sports is the second best-selling video game of all time (after Tetris, Angry Birds would top both if free downloads were also counted). It was well-received among critics and was unlike anything that preceded it.

-As is usual on Nintendo consoles, third party games generally bombed on the Wii. Profits were made due to abysmal budgets, not due to a large amount of sales.

-Motion controls were a major factor in Wii's success. Besides that, the Wiimote also caused Nintendo's two main competitors to develop their own motion controls, Playstation Move and Kinect, the latter of which was also a commercial success.

-Nintendo didn't show 3D gaming was the way to go with the Gamecube, they did so with the N64 (which did 3D a whole lot better than its competitors), which notably set the standard for all 3D platformers and console first-person shooters to come.

-The touch screen as a gaming device was in fact also popularized by Nintendo with its Nintendo DS, which brought the then-revolutionary touchscreen gaming to people way before smartphones did.

If you're going to mock Nintendo, at least don't sarcastically include statements they do in fact deserve a lot of respect for.

im not mocking them???

ps3 launched the same time as the wii and had the sixaxis motion control system built into every controller on launch (about the only game that used it as more than a gimmick though was super rub a dub, lol, everything else you basicly just turn off motion control and use the sticks and the game plays 1000x better), there was also the huge hype over the "eye-toy" just a few years earlier on the ps2 and a bunch of (particularly terrible...seriously, i have a few of them) motion tracking games released for that too. Motion control has been around and hyped for a long time, Nintendo is just the first ones that finally targeted the correct market for it.

Who cares about Nintendo vs Sony vs Microsoft though, the only two of those even comparable are sony and microsoft as they target roughly the same market, I know personally most people I know that have a ps3 or xbox couldn't care less about wii sports, but then I didn't really like tetris or angry birds either.  I also particularly hate motion control, and am quite thankful that most of the sony developers got over the hype of forcing it into every game early and thankfully added "alternative" controls for anything that used to require it. I also have a DS and absolutely hate the touchscreen on it, touchscreen gaming may be this new hyped thing that "everyone" loves but 9/10 times on DS it's used as a gimmick that IMHO ruins an otherwise good game (..I'm looking at you Castlevania dawn of sorrow...) And I'm sure the vast majority of wii owners could care less about Uncharted 3 or Halo 4, plus the huge emphasis of online play and large scale multiplayer games on the ps3 and 360.  I mean, if all you're going to look at is raw numbers of sales to compare two products I'm sure you'll find that toyota sells far more corollas than bugatti sells the Veyron EB...but even though they're both cars that doesn't immediately mean they target the same market...it's not comparable at all.

The real reality of the console war is that it doesn't really exist anymore, people buy their console based on the games for it, usually for one specific game they want.

Lol at the cheap car vs. expensive car analogy. That would work if all consoles, cheap and expensive, played the exact same games. This was ultimately debunked when we saw 3DS at $250 selling 3 to 4 times (or more, depending on the month/week) what Vita sells at that same price.

well, perhaps it was a bad choice of car, it was actually meant to be a "moderate, reliable, good mileage" vs "sporty and fun" comparison, not really price, basicly they're both cars but the point of owning one or the other is completly different...you don't buy a car like that to drive on the freeway on your way to work, nor would you buy a corolla to go out and have fun on the track, and owning one there's still good reason to own the other as they serve different purposes.

(http://i.imgur.com/86XxU.jpg)

Hooray, consoles!

how can the pc's graphics performance get worse?  :-\

what is that graph even based on

It doesn't get worse. It just stagnates from 2007-8 according to that graph.

oops guess i should learn2read  :facepalm:

The picture is taken at an angle, though, and all the non-parallel lines can make it a bit hard to read it.

consoles only manage to survive due to their historic background when PCs weren't as widespread and capable of running games; they have their exclusive titles and their own fanbase. well, except for nintendo maybe, who goes for a more interactive and family aimed principle. there's no need for a new console contestant nor is there any potential.

lol wrong

who the hell is making these threads

I think it was about plug and play and not having to bother about driver?

However modern console as lost that edge, WII U is rumored to have huge install time ???

Wait, wait, Nintendo of all console manufacturers don't have exclusive titles and a strong core fanbase? Wii saw a lot of non-core fans buying Nintendo products, but among gamers, Nintendo fans have always been much more separate from other console fans than the fanbases of its rivals (post-Genesis Sega, Sony and Microsoft, whose fanbases have much more overlap). The big reason to buy a Nintendo console has always been the exclusive first-party titles, which are often among the most well-received games of any generation (if you look at the Gamerankings all-time best, you'll see that the top three are all Nintendo first-party exclusives, and #8 and #11 are also Nintendo first-party exclusives. The #5 is a third-party Dreamcast exclusive, the #7 is a second-party PS3 exclusive and #9 is a third-party PS1 exclusive. Non-Nintendo first party exclusives are absent from the entire first page). Until the Wii, Nintendo's reason for continued relative success even when trailing in last place during the Gamecube era was their strong core fanbase and their important exclusives.

The quality of first party is slighty declining over time and franchise start to rot from their own indulgence. Not sure future game will be stellar or even surprising, just on par with good 3rd party. They use to set standard, now they follow standard.