"but the sales of Kinect are known: a total of 15m units sold worlwide. "

Yeah, that is one if the VGC-things nobody gets.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/349716/xbox-360-sales-hit-67-million-kinect-on-19-million/

In May MS reported they shipped 19 million Kinect sensors. According to VGC it is still at 16.9 million in October.

I think MS has just done a great job of advertising their system, getting the most 3rd party support of any of the 3 consoles, getting a good price point, and having the definitive online space for consoles.

MS got to where they are on hard work and sound strategy, not because of anything Nintendo or Sony did wrong.

And also I dont see Halo 4 selling 15 million. 10-12 is more likely

Nintendo (stupidly) tried to have Metroid Prime follow in Halo's footsteps, twice. Metroid Prime 2's multiplayer was a non-starter, while Metroid Prime Hunters is often disregarded as a Metroid game altogether.

Metroid is metroid. Not Halo.

Nintendo's controller play a part in the innovative features of their games, so no.

Not much good has come from Move, but Kinect was a successful venture for MS.

This is exactly what the editorial piece was not saying. I was not saying dump the Blue ocean. I was saying don't dump the red ocean.

Red ocean blue ocean, it was called positioning. Jack Trout and Al Ries must be pissed.

@bold. I agree, but that's not the argument. The argument is not Nintendo's salvation. The argument is Nintendo's dominance in the Red Ocean, and consequentially, their dominance throughout the market. Clarifying: I never said the blue ocean did not save Nintendo.

As for if they could compete or not, the gamecube says yes. I've argued this with others, but it is certain that Nintendo could have made a more powerful system than the Wii, and the U is an example of that. I'm not asking for on par with PS360, and I don't believe that would have been necessary. I would argue that Nintendo could clearly have been more competitive on both the HW capabilities of the Wii, as well as the output of high quality Red Ocean games like Metroid Prime. That didn't happen. How much would that have stolen from resources evergreen product development? Not that much imho, we would have lost 1 game (DKCR) with 1 red ocean product.

Oh, come on Ben. The xbox did everything right too, don't give me that spiel.

Yes, the 360 hit the nail head on even more than its predecessor, but toppling the Playstation was an unthinkeable feat. No I don't agree with you at all.

I get that, but that's far easier said than done.  Making a console that would compete head on with M$ and Sony in terms of horsepower would have been a HUGE financial risk.  Nintendo could have probably survived even if the Wii had Gamecube levels of success.  If Nintendo made an expensive system that lost them 100+ $ per console, and that didn't sell, they would be in a dire financial situation.

And frankly, Nintendo wasn't as good as appealing to the market that Microsoft did.  There are hardcore Nintendo fans, and hardcore Nintendo games.  Skyward Sword is a hardcore game, Mario Galaxy is a hardcore game, Donkey Kong Country Returns is a hardcore game, and Pikmin is a hardcore game.  However, the Nintendo hardcore and Microsoft hardcore are two different beasts altogether.  Nintendo doesn't really make games that appeals to that fratcore crowd, and without those kinds of exclusives they wouldn't have done pretty well.  Plus, if they tried to develop those kinds of games, that means less time and resources to develop Mario Galaxy, Wii Sports, etc.

In the end Microsoft went from 25m to 69m with the benefit of Sony shooting themselves in the foot.  Meanwhile, Nintendo went from 20 to 95 million and despite what the article's author may say, was the undisputed winner of this generation.  I think their strategy was a sound one.  I don't think they could have done all of that while still competing directly with the X-Box and PS3.

Xbox 360 is on pace to sell 80m by this gen end of even more...

Amazing achievement for Microsoft, Next Xbox will do even better.