I think it's relative to what you're talking about. There's failure as far as competing and there's failure as far as revenue. N64 and Gamecube were colossal failures when it comes to their competition but successes when it comes to them actually turning a profit.

I like to use the competition method, but others may not.

I always go with what the manufacturer expected from the console. In that respect, the WiiU is a failure if we go by what Nintendo expected at first: another money-printing machine.

Sorry Nintendo, those days are over. Now get off your rich ass and get to work.

I think maybe we should consider the profit point. The ps3 is something I would call a success selling more than 80 million and preserving brand value to prepare for the huge success that the ps4 is.


I think sometimes the objective is to leave the brand in a competitive form in order to make money later from products that may come in the future, allowing yourself to lose money at first (Im sure Sony expected better form ps3 in 2006, but I think they prefer to sell lots of ps3 instead of having cut their gaming division after the initial bomb, or being profitable selling 3 million consoles)

50M+

I feel it's more about how long it lives than number of units. Dreamcast sold qickly, but a little over a year later, it was dead. If NX I'd rushed out next year, Wii U is a failure... Something they want you to forget. But I'd they hold out until 2017 or 18... And ithe is still selling systems and games, it's good.

N64 is the cuf off for me. Less is a failure

it is extremely dependent on a lot of things. some companies are much much better at economically pushing their systems and software. 

a lot of people are a bit naive in thinking about this sort of thing by considering stricly things like market share.

for an example, the Nintendo Gamecube sold 20 some million and the PS2 like 150 million systems. YET Nintendo made MORE in that generation than Sony did during the same period of time in their video game division

sales are useless if you're putting in tons of development costs, over marketing, selling at a loss to begin with and not recouping enough revenue in software sales

I voted 20 million for the simple fact that every single system that has sold over 20 million system (bar maybe the Xbox's because Microsoft is crazy and shells ridiculous amount of money to make their video game division work) has profited for the company

Just out of curosity, generally speaking, how many units do you feel that a console needs to sell in order to preserve it's brand strength for a future generation like the PS3 did?  I mean, obviously PS3's 85 million is unrealistic for Nintendo's next console, but how many units do you feel that Nintendo's next console would need to sell to get their brand back to being a household name like it was in the 90's?

I personally felt that the Gamecube era was when Nintendo really started to fall off the map in terms of brand strength.  Here in North America, at least, the N64's 20 million units did a great job keeping Nintendo as a household name even though it had lower sales in other parts of the world.

The answer isn't just a set number.

Depends on the profit margins of the specific hardware.
Depends on if that manufacturer is also selling games associated with it. Depends on the attach rate of the audience to that console.
Many things.

As for the Wii U, I assume it's made them money but not much.

There are really many things to consider to say when a console in it's respective generation was a success.

Market share
Year/time
Exclusives
Cost
Popularity of brand
Market size
Total sales
Competition

So considering the PS3 and what was expected of it, it might not have been a success. But where it ended up and how it reworked it's self in the 7 generation, as well as the time it spend on the market. Makes it a remarkable turn around for a console that could have ended losing very badly, especially considering how strong the competition was.