You might hate this even more, but I think the problem with this whole site is the focus on sales vs a better measurement system like ROI.

ROI is more important to a business organization, and the Ps3 has horrible ROI, almost as bad as the original xbox. Nintendo will always seem to have positive ROI, so they win on their own merits. Xbox360 is also proving to start having a positive trend, that actually might make them green, and take off some of the mess that was created in the past. 

Also the king of consoles based on games, is subjective (as in I think, the wii library is better, or I think the ps3 library is better), thus anyone can say anything, but if you are going to use a bases such as metacritic, or gamerankings.....then you know the console that wins is the 360, which I strongly disagree with. 

i dont really care anymore. important thing is that sony made a comeback and that we are ending the generation strongle, with our shoulders up high and our wallets empty.

Sony wallets are empty too! :P But totally agree, sony did good in the end, in terms of the fans and building loyalty, I can honestly say, I would buy another console by them (at a cheaper price).  

well i think the 360 will end up winning second. It seems the most steady of all the three consoles and it has better holiday sales than the ps3 right?

xbox 360 has been in the green for a few years now and has gotten out of debt from the xbox 1 for like 3 years now

It really gives no sense to talk about who will win..

Wii - who will ever doubt, that this console can be a beast like it is ?

XBOX360 - amazing console - who ever think in 2005, that this console can compete with SONY - must be a fool.

PS3 - great performance and finaly, it have what it deserve..

DS - something unbelieveble :-O

PSP - well, someone had to be last.. but it really keeps on the handheld market :)

Companies:

Nintendo - total winner of this generation - DS, Wii makes their goal to be the best console maker of the all time

Sony - well.. i think, that they learn their lesson, that they are not the only, who dictate when a new generation start.. They were loosing this generation very much..but at the end it seems that it is paying off

Microsoft - compete with SONY and really brave :)

Even if XBOX will end as 3.console - games will be made for it - there are round 50mil console and counting :) so not an abadoned amount of players :) There is only one winner :)

P L A Y E R S :) This generation serves us with great fruits :)

PS3. This gen has been interesting though, because it seems as if the industry can finally support 3 different platforms. This may be caused by the extreme differences beteen the hd consoles, and the wii, which may have warranted the purchase of at least 2 of the three. For example, I know plenty of people with 360's and a wii.

That is a really good point but unfortunately such things seem to be overlooked by many.

This is obvious when people keep going on about price cuts. "MS can cut the price" or "Sony should cut the price" are terms often used here just to get their console of choice to finish ahead the other, totally disregarding ROI.

Ultimately the more consoles you sell means the more successful you are, which is different from say the cellphone market where the more money you make (regardless of your market share), the more succesful you are.

So Apple can have less than 5% market share but still make almost 20% of all profits in the industry making it a success.

On the other hand in the console business, the xbox sold more than the gamecube so was therefore "more successful" and "it finished second", even though the xbox lost $bns and gamecube made money.

It's just the way this industry is viewed. It's not going to change soon.

I've heard this one pretty often, but .. did it really make money?

Nintendo was in the black during GC era, yes, but at the same time Nintendo also had the very successful Gameboy Advanced and launched the DS, which (very soon) is  going to be the best sold console ever (I'm aware that it didn't really take off until almost the very end of GC business though), yet people seem to attribute Nintendo's good performance to the GC? Is there any information in the financial reports that supports this ?

edit: happy now Holocaust? *rollseyes*

Not true yet, VGCHARTZ has it listed as best selling but we have it on good record, even ioi said so, that the PS2 is largely undertracted , possibly by 10 million. Meaning PS2 is roughly 152 million sold, and DS is roughly 147 million, so it WILL beat the PS2 but it hasn't happened yet.