I would say definitely Xbox Live. The first serious attempt at online gaming for consoles. Everything before was kind of an afterthought. Stuff like SegaNet didn't compare. Xbox definitely brought the PC type infrastructure to gaming, and it was better for it. We got hdds for space as opposed to memory cards, and that was definitely a great thing. Only downer is that you had to pay for the service, and the others jumped on that business model, kind of tainting it in the process.

They kinda do though. They are not Nintendo, they dont have Mario or Zelda to sell mediocre hardware. Sony is dominating at the best time possible and will probably deal the death blow next gen. Nintendo will continue to release completely different devices with each generation and sell based on Brand loyalty

They don't have a blank check to do what they want, sure. But, they are given a LOT of headroom to do what they need to do. I think the division exhausted a lot of their efforts this gen doing everything in the book. Buying Mojang to add Minecraft to software sales, the constant price cuts and game giveaways, third-party deals (they got burned on), pushing for the system to be sold in China. They likely spent a lot. They have a lot of money to do things on the fly, like throwing Kinect out of the box, killing the DRM, dedicating a whole team to b/c and make two new iterations of the console while they're at it.

They lost billions on the very first Xbox and came back spending like it was no tomorrow the very next gen. As long as MS remains interested, they'll hang in there. I think their overall pride will keep them in the market. The only way MS would pull out of the console market is if they started losing profits on a regular basis and investors would look to Xbox as a scapegoat. Until then, I don't think there's a danger in that happening.

And the false comparison of the week award goes to...

Yeah, that's the only reason Nintendo is selling Switches. /s

Playstation and Xbox are basically mediocre PC's, at least Nintendo tries something unique in the console space. 

Maybe you try and debate with me, instead of showing attitude. Jeez.

LOL

This guy...

It's not THAT unique. Nintendo just went a wiser route and consolidated their console efforts and handheld business as one, and that appeals to a lot of people. You don't have one taking away from the other anymore, and the device is going to prosper from it. 

It isn't a debate, you're comparing lifetime numbers of the most successful console that generation with mid gen numbers for this gen, snes finished 18m ahead of the nearest competitor, and despite being available for sale in stores for 13 years, was only able to muster just under 50 million, yet this generation the Ps4 has done 65m in a third of that time, if that doesn't show you how dramatically different the industry was back then nothing will.

Also, given how poorly xbox one is selling, I wouldn't call a gap of 17.5 million, "well on its way to outsell" anyway, and what sort of measure of success are you throwing around if beating a console with a lifetime cap of 50m is 17.5m off when your nearest competitor accomplished that feat long ago and continues to pull ahead.

You know, the funny thing is this, the switch has been on sale for less than a year, and it's closer to pulling ahead of the xbox one than the xbox one is to pulling ahead of the snes, because it's weekly sales are significantly higher. 

Have fun trying to spin that. 

How many hybrid consoles do you know?