Your first point is about how corporations view eachother when my point is how a gamer fan would see those numbers and determine a personal victory. This isnt about a corporations definitions of success but how a fan would define it.

Hey you cant exactly pack up and leave your current city to move somewhere else because they are more likely to win. Its far easier to switch loyalties in gaming then in sports. If it was easy to move cities for the average person, then the analogy would fit better but alas it isnt feasible. But I stand by my loyalty comment. Most gamers are how you describe them: fickle and go where the games go. But the fans are the minority, real fans that are invested in the 1st party franchises that are only home to that certain corporation.

Third point again is about corporate measures when I am talking about how a fan would define victory. Two opposite criteria.

It's a sexual turn-on for me when I see Sony or Nintys share price fall. Even thinking about it is making me aroused... *sets pillow on lap to hide erection*

It's funny. During the PS1 & 2 era I didn't know any different - I bought Sony consoles, knew they were the bigger brand, but always assumed that Xbox / Gamecube were doing comparatively well. And I never really wished any ill-meaning on them, which persisted through this generation until I joined this forum. I knew that console wars existed, fans wailed on each other and all that, and that PS3 wasn't selling as well as the PS1 & 2 had, but I wasn't aware of the extent of hate towards Sony and I still didn't harbour any bad feelings towards the other two either at this point.

So it was a bit of a shock to come to a forum like this in 2012 and see all these people (I won't get into specifics) who took every opportunity they had to call Sony out, make them look bad and call out the fans for liking Sony. Like really, it was a massive shock to me. And that, in turn, made me feel a little more contemptible towards the competition than I ever did before coming here.

Of course, the people who were acting like this towards Sony claimed that they'd been victims of it first, that Sony fans were the arrogant ones who were always wailing on their system. And I'm sure that's absolutely true. But from my side, I'd never really seen any of this. I could believe it, but it came across to me as just hate for the sake of hate from the way I was seeing it. And that did nothing to make me like the competition.  Just because someone else has done it - that doesn't make it okay.

At the end of the day, I took a step back and looked at it logically. Nintendo have done nothing wrong; Microsoft have done nothing wrong. The fans are different from the company themselves, and it would be stupid to hate a company because of the fans. They don't choose their fans - influence them perhaps, maybe even attract them, but at the end of the day anyone can 'choose' to be a fan of anything and then act however they see fit.

I'm conflicted. I don't hate Microsoft or Nintendo, and I don't hate Microsoft or Nintendo fans. I have my hangups with both of the companies, but that's a different matter. But I do inevitably grow to generalise and dislike fans of the other two companies a little when certain ones act in certain ways to just have a completely unreasonable and irrational hatred of Sony, who I love.. I'm sure fans of M & N would say that certain Sony fans act exactly the same way, which I'm sure would be true as well.