Before we start, I need to clarify I personally find the idea preposterous, but this thread is not about me, but about what the community thinks. Also, this topic is not about the gamer's definition on winning or losing, this is about sales, and more importantly, profits.

During my course in the site, I always thought it was universally agreed that Nintendo is the winner in profit and sales in this generation, but in the past months, I realized that is not entirely true. While there was a recent thread that revived the aforementioned topic, I've seen that brought up several times already.

Microsoft is a far bigger company than Nintendo, there are countless divisions that bring massive profit to the company, however, that is not true for the gaming division. They struggled financially in their first years, and are just starting to head in the right direction with Kinect.

The point is, is it really relevant? Should we count the gaming division separately when we talk about games and the leader this generation? Why should we count the overall company?

To make it easier to understand:

Nintendo made $20.

Microsoft made $30. But the gaming division lost $5.

Who won this generation? Nintendo or Microsoft? That is up to you to discuss.

why would profits made on copies of excel have any effect on deciding who won the generation, nintendo won, end of

I guess Nintendo did lol

This generation:

Nintendo win

M$ improve their position in the gaming industry

Sony biggest loser

Company profit as a whole should not indicate how a division performance.

If the question is who 'won' the generation (in this case 'won' implying the most profits) then the answer is Nintendo, there is no debate because the other parts of MS, Sony and Nintendo don't come into it. (In Nintendo's case the only extra division they have is the hanafuda cards, but in terms of revenue and profit I think they only make about 2% of Nintendo's money, which will be less than all the non-gaming related things MS have moved in and out of their 'gaming' division, and certainly less than the extra stuff in Sony's current division since they restructured)

The other parts of Sony and MS do have an impact on the gaming division of course, funds and R&D, but they are not part of any gaming generation.

Sure. We can use more measuring sticks.

Not on a gaming oriented website...

And the 5th generation, despite not being part of it.

Damn! They're good!

Just out of curisosity, though, wouldn't this kind of measuring put Sony last for the Ps2 generation, as Nintendo's gaming division made a larger profit than Sony's during that generation? (According to Seece, who is generally always a trustable source on this, at least, http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3893475)

Additionally, your post count is 12345 now. That's nice. You know what they say, once you pass 12345 posts, you never go back.

Definitely not. In general Microsoft almost always wins but as far as their gaming division is concerned they haven't won this generation.