So, who really did "win" the next-gen console launch?

If you haven't watched this Jimquisition, you really should. It's quite interesting. Of course, Jim's decision is purely personal and as it so happens, it's exactly how I feel as well. With all the talk of who won versus PS4 and Xbox One, I honestly would say it was the Wii U that had the better launch. Obviously, this is apples and oranges, as Wii U's sales are no where near what either PS4 and Xbox One have now for their respective time periods, but these last two launches have been sorta.. ho-hum from a gameplay experience.

So, what defines a solid launch experience for me? It's the number of games that I have to get alongside it. I ended up getting seven Wii U games in comparison to three for the PS4 and only one for the Xbox One. I only got ONE launch game for the Xbox One! That is just absolutely pathetic, and something that's never happened to me before. Sure, there was Forza 5, but I'm not a simulation racing fan like I used to, and there's the whole issue regarding microtransactions that turned me. "Oh, but there was Ryse!" Uh... no. Anyway, enough about launch titles.

Jim brings up a really good point about the sense of wonderment. You can joke about the Wii U all you want, but out of the three new consoles, the Wii U is the only one that truly feels new and unique. The PS4 feels like a revised PS3, and the Xbox One feels like an enhanced 360. The Wii U is far more than just an enhanced Wii. It's a reinvented Wii. The tablet controller, when put to creative use, is loads of fun to play with, and made it hard to put down. I'm addicted to AC4 right now, which is why I can't put the PS4 controller down, but it's the game that's keeping me playing the machine. The Wii U TABLET kept me playing the Wii U. I would play New Super Mario Bros. U in bed just before I would go to sleep. I would take the tablet down to the kitchen and watch Netflix while I did dishes. Sure, the PS4's controller has been reinvented with a clickable touchpad and a speaker built in, but those aren't entirely new ideas, and Kinect 2.0 has been improved, but I'm still engaged in shouting matches with the thing trying to get it to "XBOX REWIND".

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to have a PS4 and Xbox One and know each one will blow the Wii U's library out of the water in the years ahead, but honestly, the Wii U was far from a failure like everyone keeps making it out to be. The Wii U itself is an amazing machine that had a solid launch, whose only real crime was trusting Nintendo to market it well.

Ooops... just realized this should have gone into system wars. Mods, if you would please.

Neither did, the PS4 and Xbox One's launches aren't over (launch window is till March)

Hmm, who won is easy.

We the gamer won, both consoles have sold pretty decent, Sony just slightly ahead in sales and system power but in the end both sold well enough to show the dev´s that consoles are still a very profitable system.

And Jim Sterling is so wrong it hurts, yes the wiiU have fun exclusives but they are the same exclusives they have had since before i was born. And noone has to forget that the game and consoles still only appeals to die hard fans and kids.

PS4 won in sales with the worst selection in games of the three

Wii U won in games with the worst sales of the three

That's it in a nutshell.

How does the gamer win by that? You mean MS and Sony.

Both consoles are terrible so far for the gamer...with games flopping more than ever and fps/gfx running lower than advertised.

The Wii U just plain lost.

I know you're a PC fan and there's nothing wrong with that, but try to stay reality based. Both the PS4 and the Xbone represent a substantial improvement in graphics over the prior gen, even if they boast only a fraction of the processing power of ten thousand dollar liquid nitrogen cooled PCs (a spec almost nobody builds games for).

The gamer wins when two consoles sell well because it means that competition lives on.

The PS4 and Xbox One both had a successful launch making them both winners. The Wii U won absolutely nothing. The library is shameful and it had a year to pull itself together. What games are on the system outside of Mario, Pikmin and Zelda?

They are not terrible and their performance is NOT performing lower than advertised. You speak great nonsense. lol

PS4 won the sales , because its cheaper , and everyone says its more powerful , and many hated on microsoft and xbox

but xbox did well really , 2 million was really good for a console 100$ more expensive . and it had a really good line - up . exclusives like dead rising 3 and forza 5 and Ryse

so i think they both kinda won . both had a great launch . and i wish another great generation of games for all the gamers no matter what platform they have .

MS and Sony with more money in their pockets. As for we, the gamers it's too early to tell. There's not enough quality games out yet on either system.

Right now there isnt a lot of games but just wait until the developers get rid of their old gen projects and really start to get into the new , then you will start to see great games.

So ya us gamers won by the consoles selling great.

Just keep thinking that, but generally speaking, the strongest launch line-up belonged to Wii U.

You DO realize both Xbox One and PS4's launches are both flawed and uninspired as well, right? The PS4's flagship title is another Killzone game, which I have completely lost interest in. The game I'm playing the most for it right now is Assassin's Creed 4. The Xbox One's exclusive? Dead Rising 3, I've lost interest in that one as well, and Ryse is so shamefully bad, I can't even force myself to play a trial. Seems like most Xbox One players are playing Forza 5... ANOTHER Forza game. Yes, because only Nintendo regurgitates everything.

Personally i think it's PS4 and sony, they had a lot of crap they had to go through last gen. Wii U has to get great games and i think it will do fine

Launches are weak software-wise. This has been the case for three cycles now. Why anyone is still surprised by this I do not know. I attribute part of the weakness to the death of the arcade. It used to be when a new home console came out, it would often come with a port of a popular arcade game, and based on that port, people would lose their freaking minds. I remember when the Genesis version of Altered Beast looked about on par with the arcade version and that blowing me away. Remember the Dreamcast version of Soul Calibur and the PS2 version of Tekken Tag murdering the arcade versions? That's the problem, there's no bar set for new generations any more, nothing that is so technically impressive that the ability to duplicate it blows people away. Sure there are PC games, but they aren't as high profile as arcade games were. Nobody fucking cares if you make a prettier version of Cryis.

Consoles used to share DNA with arcades... remember the System 246 hardware? Anyway, I think that has a lot to do with why launches feel underwhelming; there's no "big brother" platform that had games the consoles being replaced simply couldn't have done.

How you personally feel about the PS4 and Xbone's launch line-ups is immaterial. I think Killzone is awesome (had fun with the campaign and I enjoy the multiplayer even when I'm losing, which is all too often) and Xbone fans seem to have taken to not only Forza, but also Killer Instinct (don't have one myself). No game appeals to everyone, which is why variety is important.

The PS4 and the Xbone offer gamers not only exclusives, but substantially improved versions of multiplatform games. Fans of franchises like NBA2K, Assassin's Creed and of course CoD have reason to buy the PS4 or the Xbone because their multiplats run substantially better than their last gen counterparts and both boast great controllers (I think many of us could live without the PS4 controller's light be the controller itself feels great).

By way of contrast, the Wii U's controller is a bizarre, expensive tablet controller hybrid which nobody has figured out how to use (possible because unlike certain types of reptiles, humans can't look in two different places at the same time). Also, while the Wii U is slightly stronger than last gen hardware, it is hard to program for, so Wii U multiplats tend to look crappier than their last gen counterparts. So the Wii U was asking fans of multiplatform games to pay $350 for crappier looking games with crappier controls and inferior online.

Of course, the Wii has put up sub-DC and GC numbers, which wouldn't be the case if it was drawing Nintendo's core (which would at least bring it up to GC numbers). For Nintendo's core, what is killing the Wii U is 3DS/2DS, which is cheaper and has gotten a lot more love from Nintendo and third parties this year than the Wii U has (the Wii has had a long dry spell that ended only recently and while the Wii U got Celda HD, 3DS got an original Zelda game and the popular Smash Brothers is slated for both systems).

Your claim that the PS4 isn't offering up original games is nonsense. Thus far the PS4 is hosting Resogun, Warframe, War Thunder, Knack, Contrast and Doki Doki Universe. Haven't heard anything about the commercial reception to Doki Doki Universe (I love it, but my tastes for oddity exceeds that of most gamers so perhaps it won't fly off of digital shelves) but the other games have all done really well according to their makers. On a related note, indies announce games for the PS4 literally every week. Nintendo has made recent noises about winning over indies, but with the Wii U's lackluster online, pitifully small drive and the fact that games outside of a tiny handful of franchises sell poorly on Nintendo consoles (nods towards the commercial failure of Zombi U, W101, Pikmin 3 and NFS) it ain't gonna happen.

So to repeat, the Wii U is a total failure on a creative, commercial and technical level, a failure dictated by Nintendo's mistakes, some of them recent (the Wii U's expensive, useless controller and hard to program for, underpowered hardware, Nintendo's lack of enthusiasm for indies, and the fact Nintendo has put the majority of its big releases the past year on the 3DS) and some of them longstanding (Nintendo's focus on preaching to the faithful in the console arena with a small handful of core franchises rather than making and aggressively marketing original games and their decision to kill support for the Wii in 2010 in order to try to save the 3DS).

Both Sony and Xbox One have very good launch titles.