I'm trying to remain neutral but....yeah.  In my personal opinion, you are 100% right.

Last gen, I have to say the say the Wii. GC didn't do hot at all, and no one expected much after seeing the Wii. Followed by the PS3 after the price was revealed and we actually started to see what would be there at launch instead of SONY's pre-rendered footage (I'm hoping this gen we can see a game come close to that promised Motorstorm 05 trailer, lol).

This gen, it looks to be the PSV.

Hard to remain neutral when the answer is bursting your eyes it's so evident. The gamecube was a disaster in terms of general appeal, much like the 64 was. Both were horribly humiliated by their Sony counterparts (even when Sony was new to the business with a weaker console both times). With the GB and GBA saving Nintendo's arse, after the cube Nintendo's home console business was nearly doomed. You bet the Wii's success was a miracle.

As they would say in football, it was a hail mary.

Definitely the Wii, at the time people already made the assumption that Nintendo was allways in last place in terms of success which was a load of horseshit. Even though the GC sold less than the Xbox, it generated them a decent profit. The Wii, with much weaker hardware outsold both; which tells you that powerful hardware doesn't mean jack shit if you and your supporters are not making enough money off of it.

Remember the time when developers were releasing reports of their development bugdet? 20-100 million dollars on a single game and yet they werent selling enough to break even. Yet they still didn't bother making games for the wii. Yeah, nintendo made a huge gamble on this and it paid off.

This has to be one of the best OP I've read in months. Good job d21lewis in presenting the situation from all angles.

As for my opinion, I'd have to go with the Wii because it was expected to fail and crushed all expectations. The HD twins have had their share of problems but people expected them to succeed so I wouldn't call them underdogs.

Hate to be a cop out, but all 3 of the home consoles.

Wii because.

PS3 because it came off a very tough launch

X360 because it didn't have a selling point like Wii, so had to work that much harder to carve out an audience for itself.

Only one console was destined to lose and pulled of a miraculous victory. It's the Wii.

The X360 and PS3 got a miraculous 2nd and 3rd place.

Besides, before the generation started the PS3 was the expected winner which is the opposite of the underdog.

Well Wii is the obvious underdog. And you can argue that PS3, since the middle of the gen, can also share that title.

But I just can't see how the X360 is the underdog. Yes many people called the doom alarms, but there will always be those noobs. Objectively, the X360 was never on an underdog situation, never!

Now, PSV will be the underdog this gen, wether it pulls out a good performance is still uncertain, we'll have to see.

Id say the Wii. I mean come on motion controls? Back then it was unthinkable and if it were real it would likely suck, even though i maintain that opinion it appears many have jumped on the Wii train, liked it and stuck with it so fair play. Plus the fact that it has sold sooo many consoles.

The NES.