Yes they have been very profitable.  There console is profitable, xbox live, kinect, peripherals, and games has all done extremely well. 

I don't believe that is what he is saying.  He is saying for the people who bought the 360 they favored it more, hence them buying more games for it.  This will ensure that those people continue and buy the nextbox as well.

Xbox - 11.01

PS2 - 10.66

360 - 9.77

GameCube - 9.60

PlayStation - 9.23

PS3 - 8.75

Wii - 8.34

Everyone is doomed. I blame Apple.

I doubt it has anything to do with a measure of satisfaction and more to do with the 360 being the dominant console in North America, where games are generally cheapest, game vendors are more plentiful, and, frankly, you have a lot of overweight kids who stay indoors more often.

The last one might sound silly, but I'm pretty sure that the US is the most obese country in the world on a consistent basis. Contrast the leading position of console gaming in the US with Japan, a nation with a low obesity rate and where mobile gaming reigns supreme.

Honestly, all the consoles are similar enough that the satisfaction rate is probably nearly identical (if you leave out RRoD statistics). Any console that wins the core market in NA will probably have the highest tie-in ratio.

Now, as for this line, "I think the 720 will be the highest selling console next gen because the people who bought X360 this gen will continue to support the Xbox brand", I really don't see any reason to assume that. The 360 had a year's jump on the other consoles, but it's going to finish with the smallest installed base and by far the lowest sales rate. Right now, even with the launch of Kinect, the 360 is seeing a more pronounced drop than the PS3, which means customer interest is falling off at a greater rate--surprising, as Kinect was expected by many, including myself, to reinvigorate the console for a much longer period. It makes you wonder how the 360 would be doing if the Kinect had never been launched.

Globally, Xbox is still the weaker brand, as we see by that lower sales rate, and Microsoft has the most negative image of the three. In Microsoft's favor is their plan to unify everything under one umbrella, with "Xbox" services across a ton of devices. However, this will only be really effective if products like Windows Phone and Surface catch on at a high rate. I'm not sure they will.

Honestly, as I've said before, you can't predict how a generation will go based on a previous generation. People will gravitate toward what they see as the best product, even if it means breaking brand loyalty. That being said, Microsoft, which had the weakest hardware performance despite launching the 360 first, won't be launching first this time, which could hurt the growth of the brand.

I see next gen having a virtual three-way tie. It's going to be up to the console makers themselves to come up with something that can break that tie.

I'm a little surprised about that, but a lot of that might have to deal with in quality games this generation and digital downloads.  Can you imagine the numbers we would have on XBLA if they would show it?  

And Windows 8 will mopst likely gain ground on apple with its tablets so :)

Or PS3 has a higher amount of people who tend to buy only a handful of games, whereas the Japanese 360 audience consists of people more likely to buy many, many games.

Well, it's the total package. It had marketshare growth, it has a respected library, it has mass appeal, it made money, it's fairly powerful, etc.

Xbox 360 is outdone in certain areas by the competition (overall sales, overall power) but it sits in the sweet spot. Better business structure than Sony. Longer life and capability than Nintendo.

Price, most likely - not quality. Digital distribution and pricing shouldn't directly affect the Wii in theory, but third-party support and the buying habits of its audience definitely would.

it may be unfair to include digital sales as in most cases those games are cheaper and generate less revenue.

who knows.  But with digital sales increasing this site will be pretty worthless soon with the number of games sold.  Halo Reach has been said to sale well but we dont know those numbers.  Same goes to InFamous.  Lastly, PC has really increases in the last few years with steam and we don't know any of the numbers for PC.  3DS and Vita both went digital yet we have comparisons about SMB on DS and 3DS but honestly we dont know the real numbers because if digital sales.  I'm not argueing with the tie ratio, I'm just stating that XBLA, steam, etc has been a success and digital sales we dont know.  We get a few here and there like minecraft which has sold, what like 4 million on XBLA?

They gain companies just as much profit because they dont deal with the middle man and packagine. So yes it is fair. Digital games are becoming more of the future every day so take tie ratios with a grain of salt by comparing it to last gen.  COmparing it with this gen seems a little more reasonable but last gen when there was no digital software