Nintendo: Scared/Greedy/Lazy

Sony: Bad marketing/Annoying/Liars

Microsoft: Hardware failure (better now of course)/Greedy/Lack of studios

:)

I agree, nintendo has been at the forefront of tech prior to this gen. And im an not just talking about Wii not being hd... The lack of focus on online service, lack of storage space, no media center capabilities

ITs kind of like a tennis player, letting himself go for a few years and not practising or working out cause you have a trick that helps you win every tennis match. Once competition learns this trick...it won't be so easy and getting back in shape won't happenb over night.

Okay, I've not read anything past the opening post, so if I repeat something, it's not a copy... :P

Nintendo: The inability to get 3rd party support. Nintendo's games are almost too good on average, and this scares away others. Coupling this with what some of the old developers started thinking during the SNES days, and it seems like Nintendo will never be able to get rid of this old feeling. Nintendo switched away from cartridges, and had a decently powered system (GC) and a relatively weak system that's cheaper to develop for (Wii), and the 3rd party companies always bitch about how the system can't do what they want. I truthfully think some 3rd party companies will never take Nintendo seriously again.

Sony: Profitability. Selling your system at a loss works if you're so far ahead that you sell the games. But if you can't assure yourself this position, as the PS3 did not, then you just don't make money. Businesses aren't charities- they need to see a return on their investment. When said return is negative, the business can't be around forever. To date in the US, the base PS3 has yet to be sold for profit. I'd also cite insistance on new formats as a weakness (no 2 systems have had the same format yet), though I'd like to hope this will change for the PS4, and it will keep Blu-Ray.

Microsoft: Reliability. The newer Jaspers may be better, but the stigma will not go away, even upon releasing the 720. The original XBox had issues, and the 360 has issues, so there will be some people mistrusting the 720, even if it's more reliable than Nintendo's systems. And I can't blame them- when a company is 0 for 2 in creating a reliable system in the consumer's eye, they're going to be leary of #3. Maybe third time's the charm? If they screw up the 720, though, I think they're done.

And for shits and giggles, a few other companies:

Rockstar: GTA, GTA, GTA!! What, we have to make a different game? Okay... *game flops* GTA time again! When the GTA cow dies, they're going to be in a world of hurt.

Square-Enix: Sure, we'll try new games. But we have to call it Final Fantasy something. I fear that they're watering this brand down, to the point where the name will get enough confusion and not be trusted by some anymore.

Sega: They seem to forget that they don't have the dominance they once had. They're still making the games that they think would help sell their systems, despite said system not being around and their fanbase fractured.

...I may post more later if I think of it...

^ How exactly is Microsoft 0 for 2 in creating reliable hardware? If the original Xbox isn't considered reliable, I have no idea what is.

Sony: Arrogance, botched launch, E3 06, no worthwhile exclusives for like 10 months after launch.

Microsoft: Wants to charge for everything, overpriced accessories, unreliable hardware because they rushed to market

Nintendo: Not pushing motion controls nearly hard enough (WM+ wasn't bundled with new Wiis until the extremely recent WSR bundle), the ps2 had a better online system, overpriced older first party titles.

These are my peeves with each, I'm not sure what their overall weaknesses are.

Microsoft: corp that sold is soul... no free on-line (thats a sin in my doctrine)
Sony: don't really knows how to bring the community together, big steps that some times give them joints stress and pain
Nintendo: to self centered, very poor on-line, overpriced hardware (i know is cheap but still ain't worth IMO)

MS- lack of 360 v2.0( aka slim), 1st party lacking. Addons are pricey as hell
SONY- dont like the controller too much, advertising is a bit FLAT, pricey in certain markets
ninty- 3rd party is not so good, 1st party relying too much on known franchises, horrible online

MS - Lack of true profitability (they lumped RRoD costs for 3 years into one quarter, if you break it back down into 3 years, their profits evaporate). Lack of 1st party studios and IPs. If Halo gets passe then they'll be hurting. Too reliant on 3rd parties. MS is a company that's hard to love.

Sony - Lack of any profit. This is business. No one is in busy to make fans happy, there in business to make money. If you lump all cost and income ever made by the Playstation brand since inception it's in the red now thanks to the PS3. If I was an investor, I'd want Sony out of the VG hardware business or to switch to a radically different business model. Arrogance. They turned their back on their massive casual audience and the PS3 just doesn't have the library 1st or 3rd party to lure them back.

Nintendo - I understand where they are going and for their market they need to keep the tech user friendly. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). And the motion tech must have brought up the cost so high (initially) they were afraid they'd price themselves out of the market with a more powerful HD system. They may have made the right choice but it'll still cost them. They need to be more like Apple. Powerful tech made butt easy to use. If it's cool enough, people will pay the price for it. Nintendo lacked the confidence to put out a $600 Wii. If they had, it would be the spiritually successor to PS2 as all 'core' HD games would be on it as well as the massive casual base. As is: their internet is sub-par and unfriendly, graphics look poor on HD and it can't run a lot of games the HD systems can properly even with reduced graphics. Casual audience is large and profittable (Nintendo's made billions) but also easily distracted and fickle. Nintendo is hard pressed to balance Nintendo core games with casual over two massively successful systems. They need more studios.

However, at the end of the day, Nintendo (and Blizzard) is the only truly success company in the industry today. Everyone else is struggling just to get by.

I'll stick to business weaknesses, since it's more objective

In Nintendo's case, i think they've got the problem of not doing enough investment in growing their own software base, either in terms of getting aggressive about bringing high-quality 3rd party exclusives on board, or just in creating more first-party studios. This more than anything else is what holds them back. The DS has been drifting on older games for a while now, so clearly they need more. They've also been too conservative about hardware production, probably missed out on 10 million sales they could have made sooner than they did, or more.

Microsoft also needs to invest in more first-party development. In their more immediate contest with Sony, the difference is made up by the fact that the fewer big brands that Microsoft has are much stronger than Sony's first-party brands, for now, but Microsoft is relying too much on momentum right now (that people buy 360 games because they have bought 360 games in the past, and also because other people are buying 360 games. This isn't a strategy that you can sustain in a console transition at all, just ask Sony or Nintendo). Equally, they're really going to need to twist some devs' arms about Natal if they want Natal to get anywhere.

Sony needs to figure out exactly why people buy handheld game consoles, and also needs to figure out immediately that the digital-only model is not the future at all. They also have this fixation on prestige games which is really non-helpful in terms of selling consoles. As great as Team ICO's games are, how much money are they investing into that that they could be pouring into something that's going to sell consoles? Killzone 2, Uncharted 2, Gran Turismo 5, are all great games, but i think they could have been made far more economical than they were. Sony's propensity to push the envelope is "good" for the industry because it sets a higher standard, but what exactly has Sony gotten out of breaking the bank?

yeah this sums it up for me :)