The Nintendo Wii is the greatest console that ever existed, no other console in the history of gaming could challenge it and win. However Nintendo has fallen from a position of greatness once, and now they've kicked open the door of possibility you must now consider the next generation at this point to be an open field. As I said, no console in the history of gaming could challenge it but the futures is a different story entirely.
One could argue that the PS3 and Xbox 360 are better than the PS2 from a complete perspective. The technical issues or low frame-rate, the controls are more responsive and intuitive and the systems can deliver a far wider variety of game content that the one that came before. Nintendo in this sense bettered them yet again by putting the fundamental problem of control and interface on the agenda and moving towards solving it. Essentially its like saying they sold excellent cars but they forgot that most people drive an hour to work in a traffic jam and Nintendo just invented the automatic transmission.
Does anyone remember when the Sony executives were considered geniuses? Sony could do no wrong and everything they touched turned into gold? This business is a funny one, it involves a massive amount of money and creativity when usually the use of both of those terms together is an oxymoron. This is like a poker game, the bet you put on the table gets bigger every round, but the reward also increases substantially if you put together the winning hand. When you have three companies taking big bets between innovation, engineering and creativity you can never be sure what will come of it until the writing is on the wall.
Nintendo is a great company, but that doesn't mean they have a manifest destiny for greatness. Each company must prove their worth to their consumers (Game buying public and developers). Nintendo failed once in part because they forgot about their developers. Sony failed once because they forgot about both developers and the game buying public. Microsoft failed to really capitalise on the Xbox 1 because they didn't have a clear reason to be in this business in the first place until this generation.
In the end one thing that has come out of this generation is that there is no one console yet that can satisfy every consumer. The market has changed and the very concept of "winner takes all" has become a misnomer. There are numerous winning strategies for the next generation and they don't all involve taking the number 1 spot. However all three companies in the business have tasted success, they have all won a majority of consumers in the past or in other fields. Divergent strategies do not support a status quo scenaro, and all three console companies are not expected to follow the same path to success.
Tease.
