Or maybe the most surprising? I certainly do. In '04 and '05 just about everyone was predicting a next-gen repeat of the then-current generation: The PS3 would be the victor, followed by the 360, with the Revolution (Wii) in third. Come 2010, quite the opposite has happened so far (well, besides the 360 being in second).

Same goes with the PSP and the DS. Sony was entering the handheld console market with more power and a more mature target demographic over Nintendo, and everyone expected them to finally be dethroned from its Game Boy domination days. We all know what happened (although you can't say the PSP did bad, 60 million consoles so far means you've done something good).

I didn't think any differently, until the whole thing played out like it did. I never expected the Wii to be the sort of runaway success it was, and I never thought a Sony console would be trailing companies it competely destroyed the last time (or two times) out. For a while the PSP gave the DS some competition until the amount of good game releases had longer and longer gaps... And then it was already too late. I guess the only thing most could agree on was that the 360 would be in second and that's not even guaranteed as things stand. Or sit. Or whatever...

There have also been surprises even after we thought all the trends were there to stay. Who'da thought that the 360 would outsell the Wii for 14 straight weeks? Certainly not until a couple months ago. Who'da thought the 360/PS3 battle would be such a rollercoaster? It's still a big thrill ride as I type this. Who'da thought the DS would outsell the PS2? Only when it started setting sales records. This is definitely the most interesting and surprising generation so far to me.

I don't find the whole sales fiasco that interesting, but I do think that the games have become much better. I've played so many different games that I've loved and nearly every week I have a new great game to play. I kind of wish I still had that social interactivity that I did back with the N64 and Counter Strike LAN parties, but Modern Warfare, Guitar Hero and FIFA have been good enough to satisfy my social gaming needs.

The 16-Bit war between Sega and Nintendo was much better in my opinion (with CD-i, Neo Geo, Jaguar, and Turbografx-16 fighting for scraps).  People were tooth and nail back then and there wasn't even an internet.  Battles over who had the better version of Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter 2 claimed so many lives.  Lots of good kids died in that war.

*1000 yard stare*

I was there, man!  I saw it!  I SAW IT!!  My friend Lawrence said the Genesis version of NBA Jam was the best.  They killed him right there on the playground.  I...I don't want to talk about that anymore.

Everything was innovative during that time, too.  Evolutions in animation, 3D graphics, gameplay, and technology were appearing every few months.  Arcades were still alive and it was like looking into the future everytime I went there.  That was an amazing time to be a gamer.  Even baby steps into online gaming was starting to appear, then.

Those were good times, gaming just isn't what it use to be.

well i grew up in the Playstation era playing from 1997-2010 with playstation consoles, during those 13 years i have been though 3 gens and  man its been a ride, but the most interesting is the rise of Online gaming on consoles to rapid performance in the period of 2007-2010, online gaming on console is getting better and better and now its the battle for the best multiplayer experience.

i have only been playing online since 2008 (yea it took that long, i am 18 been playing since 5 and yet in 13 years it took 11 to start online gaming with Call of duty 4, i only played Single player and the rare LAN battle up until then) 

This is more a WTF-gen than "interesting".

I haven't followed that many generations, but I think this one is very interesting indeed. Lots of disruption and still three very viable consoles. Good times.

Also, who would of thought that the dominating console would lack nearly all major 3rd party games that we as gamers like, but here it is this gen with the Wii, while PS3/360 just keep getting fantastic 3rd part games.

This gen is crazy, it does however mean that come next generation of consoles, figuring out who will dominate will be up in the air as this gen proves that anything can happen both on the hardware and software side things.

I think that one thing we can be sure of, if Wii software sales go the way of the DS, then Nintendo may be the 1st to release the successor to the Wii, and yes it was the slowing software sales that pushed Nintendo to get the 3DS announced, other than that DS hardware sales are still high, but they clearly need both hardware and software to move otherwise there would be no need for the 3DS just yet.

One thing I'm interested in is, will any manufacturer release their successor to their respective console, if the PS2 is still being sold, or will they simply wait until sony kills the PS2 in the 3 major markets.

I mean it would be funny if you walk into an EB games store and you find the PS2, PS3, PS4, Wii, Wii HD, X360 and X720 with in first month of the new console coming out, now that would be market saturation. Although it would be a nice museum XD  

Looking at the generations I have enough knowledge to comment on, my thoughts go as such:

Gen 3 - NES dominated.  Badly.  I knew 3 people who owned a Master System.  The first I met actually played it, the second I met used one of the controlers on my Genesis for a multiplayer game, the thrid kept it in a shed.  The SMS was destroyed by Ninty's liscencing program, and the other competitor was a decisively scatter-brained Atari the had already squandered their presence in the market.

Gen 4 - A rather close battle between 2 major competitors not far off from one another with the presence of some minor competitors.  There was a lot of in-fighting between Sega and Nintendo (mosstly on Sega's part), but there were a lot of missteps by Sega and ALL of the minor competitors.  Hell, Ninty had some missteps too.  It wasn't a dominated generation, per say, but in the end the Genesis only looked good against the SNES because it had a significantly earlier launch.

Gen 5 - There's a clear winner here, as well as a clear scond and third.  But what's not so obvious is the game libraries.  This is the generation where you really did have to own all of the systems to get all the great experiences.  Sega was at an all-time high, and they had some really great partners.  Even as the weakest entrant in the gen, if you didn't have a Saturn you weren't getting the full gaming expreience.  The N64 was much the same, but also produced a few of the greatest video games in history (Mario 64, GoldenEye 007, and Zelda: OoT come to mind immeadiately).  Meanwhile, the leader of the pack had so many great exclusives it's often unbelievable.

Gen 6 - PS2 domination.  That's about it.  The GC survived on Ninty exclusives and a few others, but even then they weren't single-handedly delivering enough home-runs to gain the respect they once had.  The Xbox has a few exclusives, but beyond Halo few are notable (I can only think of NG, DoA, and Steel Batllion off the top of my head), and its biggest stregnth was slightly improved multiplats.

Gen 7 - Nintendo succedes at doing something different, while the other two try to bash eachother as much as possible, and then later spend as much effort bashing Nintendo.  The Big N had has a few missteps, but they've still managed to out do the PS2 while their competitors have proven they can easily out-do the previous best 2nd place result with ease.  In fact, they are perhaps changing the way console generations play out, and indeed might even put themselves over most generation winners of the past while they're at it.  But this gen feature more mud-sliging than 4 and less diversity in gaming experiences than five despite the the advent of motion controls.

I still have to see how this gen plays out, but up to this point my answer is definitely gen 5.  It was a time when the companies didn't answer eachother with so many insults (though there were plenty, esp. the Crash Banidoot ads that picked up where Sonic ads left off), but instead with great, exclusive content that showed the system was worth buying in addition to whatever other system you had, instead o opposed to that system.

tl;dr

Gen 5.  Yeah.

This gen is one of the least surprising.

On the day Sony announced the PS3, everyone was horrified by the price and the launch lineup, and it sold poorly due to the price and launch lineup

On the day Sony announced the PSP, everyone thought it would sell very well, for a non Nintendo handheld, and it sold incredibly for a non Nintendo handheld

The DS was expected to win by a large margin, and it did. Sure, it sold slightly above most people's predictions, and the software is WELL above.

360 did exactly what is was expected to.

Nintendo's console was predicted to flop, then details got announced and the world was split into those who saw that it would do well, and those who didn't. Those who didn't are blind and most of them had to include negative sales in order to justify their wild claims. No-one took these people seriously at the time.