In the past, Nintendo has committed many "sins." Its deals with third parties were one-sided. However, it planted the seeds of its own downfall when it broke an agreement with Sony to work with Phillips. The new competition (Sony) and the software makers gleefully worked with each other when the PS1 came out, leaving Nintendo to wither.

Since then, Nintendo has finally realized it cannot always bully to get its own way and has pretty much allowed people a much freer hand with software on its platforms. This has led to greater quantity (and occasionally good quality) third-party releases.

Microsoft came into the video gaming industry with the hubris it displayed in computer OS and productivity software. Its greatest "sins" deal though with its current entry -- the Xbox 360. It released it rushed and not full featured. While there are varying numbers on the frequency, most people believe that Microsoft's rushing out of its X360 to beat the competition to a certain extent led to the console having its infamous hardware problem (RRoD). Be it hurried engineering, inadequate testing, or bad karma, Microsoft has been paying the price and trying to do penance ever since.

An even bigger problem though is the lack of a hard drive requirement for the Xbox 360. That was a move backward since the original Xbox had a hard drive. The move has restricted software install possibilities. And worst of all, it allowed Microsoft to sell overpriced proprietary hard drives (this "sin" of expensive hardware add-ons dates back to the original Xbox and also is seen in wireless adapters).

Sony too has "sinned" this generation. It basically could do not much wrong and was a relatively benevolent market leader. The "sins" were indecision and synergy. Indecision because it could not decide what it wanted the PS3 to be. Synergy because it the incorporation of BR-DVD technology was useful to the corporate bottom-line, but had many drawbacks for developers and gamers (difficulty to program, high price, etc.).

Mike from Morgantown

Sony

Woups. Wrong thread.

to be honest, if a business doesn't have an 'evil' side, then they're never going to survive out there.

Microsoft are by far the worst just look at their console which they selectivly RR on people who they dislike :0

Sony

they all have good and bad qualities

None of them are evil, as they are all companies trying to succeed in the business world.

If you were to say business/corporate world was evil (I believe so) then all 3 of them are evil.

Sony. Not only did they take Sega out of business, but they dismantle Sega after Sega decided not to be partners with Sony on a platform. That's cold. It aint like Sega dissed Sony they just were doing their own thing. Although it didn't help them. Plus someone in Sony has stated in the past that anything that says Sony will sale. They taunted the Wii before it was released and didn't look at it as competition, and thought the 360 was out of their league. But so far it hasn't panned out for them.

Why is everyone solely focus on MS as a console maker? If you look at the history of DOS and Windows they essentially wouldn't exist as a company without lying, cheating, and stealing their way to the top. Windows was no an idea developed by MS, it was outright stolen from Xerox. They also didn't do much of anything to make DOS, since they sorta conned a guy into selling it to them for far less than it was worth and claimed it was their own work.

Playing dirty is the only way to make a company go from nothing to ruling the world in a decade, so it's hard to fault them for this, but their record still comes out looking much uglier than Sony's or Nintendo's.