As most already know, the console wars started after the video game crash of 1983, when Nintendo released the NES which reinvigorated the market. Shortly, SEGA released the Sega Mater System that competed with the NES and the little remembered Atari 7800. Decades later, people continue to be involved in the console wars, currently Wii U vs PS4 vs XB1. Nintendo dominated Gen 3, Gen 4, and Gen 7, Sony controlling Gen 5 and 6, and SEGA and Microsoft at no victories. Sony is in the lead of Gen 8, but it is much to early to make any concrete decisions. Below is a list of the console war veterans and fighters.

Gen 3 "Winner": Nintendo

NES: 62 million       Atari 7800: 4 million        SMS:12 million

Gen 4 "Winner": Nintendo

Genesis: 40 million          SNES: 49 million      AES: >1 million      TGx16: 10 million

Gen 5 "Winner": Sony

N64: 33 million            PS1: 104 million               Saturn: 9.5 million

Gen 6 "Winner": Sony

XB: 25 million      PS2: 158 million     GC: 22 million       DC: 11 million

Gen 7 "Winner": Nintendo

XB360: 81 million    Wii: 101 million   PS3: 83  million

Gen 8 "Current Leader": Sony

NWU: 6.1 million                                                   PS4: 7.2 million                                                             XB1: 4.4 million

Bought every console since gen 7, dont have the dreamcast from gen 6 or the satern from gen 5, or the neo geo and turbografx from gen 4.  Gen 3 is before my time. 

People should watch this series, it really does a good job on telling how somethings happened back then, quite interesting

https://www.youtube.com/user/playvalue/videos?shelf_id=1&view=0&sort=dd

neo geo was never in the war... they were so far away from this world, nobody could hate em

its like world cups

Nintendo 3
Sony 2

nintendo compete in every gen and when will a non japanese console win a gen

Not anytime soon? Since Sony is also Japanese? I do like Nintendo however, whether they win or lose, they keep chugging away! They are like that choo choo train that people love to ride once a while during their key events that all the other choo choo trains are jealous of cause their key events aren't as great so they have more smaller key events to attract consumers and I am gonna stop before this analogy dies even more

Wii did not win past gen, no matter how you try to define "winning a generation".

The wii sold more. Yes and the iphone sold even more. You cannot compare different things and if you take a look at the software sales of the PS3, the 360 and the Wii it is more than evident that the main competitors were the PS3 and the 360. The wii very consciously targeted a different demographic with its gadget-like functions and invested hugely in casual digital entertainment (eg wiifit). We knew it all along, Iwata said this from the beginning, they were going for a different market and sold different software.

The gen leader affects the market. Once again nothing the Wii did in fact have a true long lasting impact on the gaming world. What about motion controls you might ask. Exactly my point. When it comes to gaming it was a passing fad. Sony tried to emulate it and didn't do much, the Kinect proved to be a mere firework, even now with the much improved Kinect 2.0 it has failed to provide anything solid gaming wise. But motion controls are around, aren't they ? Yep, when it comes to smart phones and their casual entertainment attempts, see point one.

The gen leader improves the brand's strength. And here is gets really sad. The "success" of the Wii drove Nintendo into a corner, both gamers and publishers stopped trusting in Nintendo's promises about hardcore gaming. On the other hand look at the wild success of the PS4. Yep it does not really have many killer games yet but that's where the brand's strength comes in play: the latter years of the PS3 and the amazing software support it got strengthened the brand's image. After all buying a console is not really a right now decision, it's an investment for the future, it's a marathon and because of the PS3 we know the PS brand does that well.

Low sales, costumer distrust and lack of publisher support for the WiiU are all after effects of the so called Wii domination.

So what you're saying is Apple won last gen by all three standards and Sony and Microsoft were hardly even competitors? Apple did do all three of those things in the gaming sphere...

Or maybe we should track and discount all the 360 and PS3 units that were sold to casuals, because casuals are a market that doesn't count when determining victory.

Thanks for so provocatively misrepresenting my sayings and showing everyone what a straw man argument is.

Generalizing is a very cheap shot at making a point: We are talking about gaming generations.

The Wii's target audience is irrelavent, its still a dedicated gaming device.