Each console won the 7th gen

Nintendo Wii won in sales.

Xbox 360 won in hardware (aka quality for your dollar).

Sony PS3 won in exclusives.

The only thing factual there is the Wii won in sales.

yep. actually, the pc won in sales (technically). it probably beat the wii in sales, in one year alone.

this isn't objective and i can't prove it, but we all know that lots of people bought the wii and it collected dust ever since it failed to get third party support.

ever heard of RROD?

PS3 was the best console to have without a doubt.

Wii may have won in sales but it was the worst out of the three.

Yup, I know more people who bought a Wii and let it gather dust than people who actually bought and used the Wii regularly...

I disagree with 360 winning with hardware per dollar to be honest with you. The original 360 had so many cut corners that the RROD happened, and the PS3 was the cheapest blu ray player for a good year or 2, and remained one of the best Blu Ray players around for quite a few years after that.

The problem is that most people don't give a shit about Blu Ray.

And only 1 game needed the 50 gigs of disc space (MGSIV) and that was mostly due to bad programming.

I agree that all three companies could make a legitimate claim to feel good success after gen parties.... It's the stuff that fanboys should take notice of. 3 healthy companies usually means more win for gamers.

Yeah, I also have to disagree about 360 having the best hardware. It didn't 1up the PS3 in specs and certainly not in reliability. Sure it was very comparable to the PS3 while costing less, but that's about it.

Agree, PC lost

Absolute win.

I'm hoping it will be the same this gen too where each of the 3 carries it's own significant merits.

Pre-2010 360 hardware was poo. However, like its predecessor, the 360 did have the best price to power/performance ratio.

Yes, I have. Mostly affected a minority of gamers. Aka idiots who pre-order consoles and don't wait until the defects get ironed out.

Still Xbox 360 was a great product for the first half of the gen. At $400 for really good specs at the time, it was the perfect balance between quality and cost. PS3 was too expensive. Wii had weak hardware. Xbox Live was a great service and PSN only caught up after Xbox Live succeeded so well.

Well, the PS3 was not the best console to have in the beginning. (2006 to 2009). Lots of it's new IP's like Haze and Heavenly Sword were failing. $600 was way too much money. It was missing third party support, until it got re-ported over. It was difficult to develop for.

But during the second half of the gen, I agree entirely. PS3 won.

Wii, I agree. It was good as a home entertainment product. Failed as a console. It was, in hindsight, probably worth the money. But it never met it's lofty expectations.

Yeah, PS3 was also easily my tops.

As for the Wii being the worst, guess that depends. If we look at each platform as stand alone then absolutely, the Wii library comes up short.

But owning multiple platforms I found the Wii to offer more than the 360. Owning a PS3 and a PC mostly made the 360 a redundant machine whereas the Wii had plenty of great games that you couldn't find anywhere else. Not trying to shift goal posts here, but that's how it was for me.

indeed. It's funny too, because looking at them as they sit now, you'd say... jesus, they all kinda suck. haha... but you just know, as every gen does, once these games start rolling out their identities start taking shape and we have a nice volume of games to look at. I really think we'll be in another situation at the end of the generation where all three consoles will warrant a purchase. that is pretty cool.

Interesting, I actually feel that all 3 are pretty cool right now; lack of games aside. Or was it the lack of games you were referring to?

Xbox360 won hardware? really? it's like everyone got the RROD, xbox360 won nothing last gen

Lack of games... oh definitely, the three consoles LOOK compelling right now. Im super excited to see a white diskless Xone at a ps4 price ( I believe the hype! its coming, and I wouldn't be surprised if sony does one too ) , The WiiU has the best games ATM, and my few times playing with the tablet controller, (at @Animal-Mother house of all places, lol) was great ... and I can easily see the benefit of it.

but.... and I know its early, but taken at face value, the xone's ui is a mess (will be patched soon), ps4 offers next to nothing outside of netflix and a few basic apps, and wiu still isnt the place for online gaming and they do have a bit of a games problem in the future justifying that price (to me anyway, id buy it at 200$)

Like I said though... the sky is the effin limit for what they're gonna unleash on us over the next few years and that has me excited for EVERY console. :D

Right on lad, I'm also pretty hyped to see what comes to these consoles.

And I agree, they all have loadsa potential. I currently only have the PS4, but will eventually get the WiiU and XBO, just finding it already difficult which of those to get first!

If there is a cheaper white XBO, possibly without Kinect or optical drive then I am there no questions asked day 1 haha.

The Wii won for:

• Most consoles sold
• Significantly increasing their market share from the previous generation by bringing in a new market of casuals

The Xbox 360 won for:

• The highest games sold per console attach ratio
• Winning in the largest gaming market, America
• Significantly increasing their market share from the previous generation by converting lots of gamers from the previous market leader, Sony

I can't think of any way that the PS3 could be considered a winner in the 7th gen. You could say that they had the best exclusives which I would agree with, but that's just an opinion and there would be other people that disagree with that. The facts are that it did not win in any market and it lost over half of it's market share from the previous gen while both of the other two consoles more than tripled their market share. That makes it the very clear loser of the 7th gen.

Hello Starwolf, I was happy to hear you are enjoying your Wii U and Xbone purchases in that other thread. I am enjoying my Wii U most of all of the newest three machines. You can consider whatever machine you want as a loser per generation, that's fine, but you brought up something I felt needed addressed and that's the concept of market share.

If you compare any machine to the previous winner, in this case the Playstation 2 which holds the record for most worldwide sales of a console, it's going to be a poor, very slanted "sales fight" indeed. I wouldn't argue now nor a decade ago about that. These machines didn't hit the PS2 heights, and Sony certainly failed to hit PS2 numbers with the PS3, obviously. No arguments. I predicted 6 years ago in SW the PS3 would end up at about 65-75 million by the generations end knowing the PS2 sold over 150+ million. I knew back then, as I'm sure Sony's high paid CEO's knew that releasing a Blu-Ray Playing $600 console was a tough sell to the mass market. There is always a winner every generation in sales (NES, SNES, PS1, PS2, Wii, and now ____). Frankly I don't care about sales, at least in SW because the mass confusion and poor interpretations, but I wanted to specifically talk a little bit about Market Share.

You see, you can't lose market share you didn't ever have. The Wii market share can grow or shrink against the PS360. Vice versa. The New systems didn't lose market share, they never had any to begin with and are growing it as we speak. The Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube's Market Share are not apart of the Wii's, 360's, and PS3's market shares. I have posted about this in SW many times over the years before, one sec... Against the mighty PS2, all these machines lose after all it was the best selling console of all time. However, that gen is over. People have to actively buy a new machine, in this case the Xbone, Wii U, or PS4 and those figures contain new or converted customers from the previous generation (WiiPS360). It's a whole new ball game, a New Market Share.

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Market Share always resets per gen, otherwise the XBone, Wii U, and PS4 would be in different situations and Wii U would be an automatic win (coming off the Wii), or the PS3 would have been an automatic sales win (coming off the PS2) or the N64 would have been an automatic sales win (coming off the SNES)....et cetera. Market Share, unfortunately, doesn't transfer in the way your post describes.

In sports, the champions of one year don't have any advantages the next season. Instead, they have to once again prove themselves all over again, sometimes they do, most times they don't.

Exempli gratia : Green Bay Packers, St. Louis Cardinals, Dallas Mavericks, and other Championship teams from 2011.

The same goes for each gaming generation. They are completely reset. Who knows what next gen holds, but companies won't lose or gain more marketshare based on this gen, since they will be reset.

The current market share is the current market share, it's not part of next generation's market share cycle. SW confuses this issue frequently.

You can of course lose market share. For instance, the 360 was number one this generation having a year head-start, and kept that lead over the Wii and PS3 for a bit. Now, we can see the Wii is about 20+ million units sold over the 360 and PS3, and the 360 and PS3 are neck and neck.

The generation isn't over, but when it is over and the numbers are tallied years from now, the market share is contained within this gen.

Next Generation, it all starts over again. It's a pretty simple concept, but people confuse what Market Share is in SW for a great, many years. I don't always have the patience to explain it though.

I'm not going to argue semantics. The sports idea was just a metaphor, but clearly there are differences. Sports teams trade players, in consoles there are variables as well like launch date, price point, features, game support, dev teams being shut down or leaving (Bungie leaving for example or Zipper Closing), talent leaving/defecting (Jaffe, Insomniac, Bungie, Rare), company revenue not allowing for proper advertising, as well to consider per generation that would be an apt comparison to the problems sports teams have...but that's a metaphor for you.

A previous winner of generation may have an advantage in brand, like an incumbent Senator, but nothing is guaranteed as we saw the shift from SNES to PS1 and PS2 to Wii. It's always going to be a different generation, a different market share.

Market share is not that confusing and it is a simple concept as long as you remember it resets per generation...Next Gen (Xbox4, PS5, WiiU2) it starts over once again. Market share resets when defining a new generation.

One other thing to mention, the WiiPS360s are still going to be sold for sometime. We'll get a better picture in a few years when they are all discontinued and sold through.

PC won in sales, hardware, games and exclusives.

The only argument left against PC is that it doesn't have GTA V.

I'd actually put it like this

Wii won in sales and exclusives

360 won in online services and multiplats

PS3 won in best overall package. (offered a bit of everything, but wasn't particularly good at anything)

Wii wasn't next gen. Xbox 360 won period.

But PC doesn't count :P

*runs*

But you don't dictate the rules.

360 won in no category,lulz

pc won in sales?? LOL! how you gonna prove that?

Well let's put it this way, each quater of a year, pc sales are between 60 and 80 million.

I'll let that sink in, that is in 1/4 of a year, every year. If I'm not mistaken that 80 million is the lowest point in a long time as well for a Q4 sales.

first off, this thread is referring to the 3 consoles last gen, so let that sink in. secondly, we are referring to VIDEO GAMES here, 80 million pcs sold has nothing to do with a thread about video games seeing as we have absolutely no idea what those pcs were bought for.

The thread OP never said it was consoles, but alas, it probably was; I was simply pointing out that pc definitely won in sales. Assuming only 5% of those were used for any kind of games (probably a conservative estimate, 10% is more likely), and assuming that the pc only sold 65 million every quater for the last 8 years (way under the mark); then that would be 104,000,000 pcs used in some form or other for games which is just higher than the Wii.

But I digress, this thread is only about consoles.

the title of the thread says "each CONSOLE won the 7th gen", so yeah. again, we will never know how many pcs are bought strictly for gaming, so it's ridiculous to try and compare console sales to pc sales.

Ah yes, another excellent argument by consolites :P

While true for the 360, I'm pretty sure the GameCube had a better price/performance ratio than the Xbox.

Yep, and Solidty wins the "long drawn out teaching lesson no one asked for."

You can't prove it won in sales, exclusives is a subjective thing as I find the PC lineup laughable at best, and there are still plenty of arguments left against PC.

Exclusives isn't a subjective thing. It got more exclusives than PS3, Wii and 360 combined.

I'm not saying there aren't any valid arguments left against PC, I'm saying that on SW the arguments against PC are very weak...

LOL...I know it's PC now to tell kids they're all winners...but it doesn't really work that way. There can only be one winner.

@drekula2: I'm sorry but how did 360 win quality of hardware? Anyone else remember RRoD?

I would give that they won the "Bro Gamer" crowd with CoD, Madden and Halo but other than that... no.

I seem to remember Xbox got a 33% price cut very early on to become not much more expensive than GC. I do know Xbox was more powerful but not by how much.

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Exactly, combined with a good online service, it was the most recommendable console in 05, 06, 07, 08.

I agree. Wii had the casual market and some amazing Nintendo exclusives, 360 had the best hardware design (powerful and easy to develop for), which resulted in more and better multiplats, and PS3 had the best first party quality and diversity.

Great generation!

The Xbox and GC were very close, with the Xbox having the superior shading effects and the GC having the superior polygon counts. And considering how the GC was significantly cheaper than the Xbox, especially here in the UK (£129 vs £299), the GameCube quite easily had the best price-performance ratio that generation.