Nintendo really won in any way measured (most revenue by far, first and second best selling consoles, and giant improvement over the previous generation).

The question is, who got second?

Microsoft experienced massive growth while Sony experienced massive decline, lots of lost revenue, but still managed to massively outsell Microsoft in terms of hardware (including PS3 and PSP) this generation. Yet when considering Sony's strategy of profiting on software and taking a loss on hardware, their hardware sales are largely irrelevant if they are not generating software sales - should Sony console sales not be considered a success until X-amount of software has sold for them?

But using other divisions to gauge success is erroneous. For example, Exxon Mobil would be a more successful video game company than the others, simply because their brand of gas station is in Gran Turismo, a game, and Exxon Mobil profited the most.

This is coming from me. That is a weird argument. Nintendo won the gen. MS improved their standing in the industry, and Sony gave away their PS2 marketshare to Nintendo and MS.

Company wide profits is really only used when you wanna say my favourite company > yours (overall).

But gaming division profits wise, Nintendo clearly won, with MS still holding a wide profit gap with Sonys gaming division.

Surely by this logic Apple and Google are the winners this gen with their App market places?

Nintendo's losses at the moment aren't from the Wii, so you can't factor that in when comparing to the Xbox 360 as 3DS is a different section of the operation and since the huge change of fortunes for that systems it sounds like pretty much the entirity of Nintendo's losses come from property/currency issues (which are actually benefitting Microsoft because of the weak dollar). This is also something which impacting Sony's operating figures. The strong yen means all overseas sales are lower than the originally expected them to be. Weak dollar however benefits Microsoft as all their non US sales are bringing in more profit than anticipated.

This is something however you can't take for granted and could turn fortunes for all divisions into a rollercoaster as the US economy is now showing solid signs of recovery and it wouldn't take much for this to reverse to the point where it directly effects Microsoft's efforts in Europe particularly which is the area they are wanting to expand in now.

Sony: they sank the most money on gaming to prove their dedication, and that is all that matters to us gamers.

"Should we use Microsoft's overall profit to measure the gaming division's success?"


Only if they made no profit if it wasn't for their gaming division :P



This argument is stupid.

* Sits back and waits for Train Wreck to arrive *

This is why the commonality is to look at worldwide sales and market share for the "winner" of a generation.

With that in mind, since NES we have these winners: NES, SNES, PS, PS2, Wii.

If you instead focus on market related revenue (which is the only logical way to look at it), then you have one winner since NES.... Nintendo. Even with Nintendo's recent, first time ever, loss. Nintendo still easily dominates any generation in terms of revenue.

You really can't compare even the ''gaming'' divisions nowadays as both Sony and MS include a lot of other stuff with their gaming business.

counting MS divisions outside of the gaming industry! well since i can't think of another other word to use, i'll go with the op and say preposterous.

the companies overall profit has nothing to do with the gaming industry, so why would anyone ever consider the idea of overall profit for a different industry?

if you look at it like that since this gen started, which company made more money.? just pick one. i'm sure Trump towers is in the top 5 somewhere.

No, just no.

Obviously you can't compare gaming companies like this, only measurement you can use for comparisons are sales, revenue and losses or profits from the companies gaming divisions.

And even that has become a flawed and difficult comparison because of the fact that MS's EED and Sony's deparment include so much more than just the Xbox and Playstation brand respectively nowadays.