The Wii was awesome, amazing games. Period.

The WiiU also had awesome games, but the hardware was abysmal, it really sucked.

It had some great games, but it's a console I'll go back to less then Gamecube or N64, I don't think it's lineup has as many games that could be considered "classics" at least imo.

Sony's PS3 had everything to do with why the wii sold what it did. The only time nintendo's home consoles managed to sell 100 mil is when sony dropped the ball with the PS3. Sony's home consoles tend to be the market leader by far and what do you think happens when it screws up ? The sales go somewhere. Both MS and Nintendo's home consoles in that gen managed to do the best they ever did in that market ever and yet, it has nothing to do with sony?

Corelation does not equal causation.  Microsoft benefited, they were producing an exceptionally similar product.  Nintendo did not, they sidestepped MS and Sony in their entirety.  If Sony had done better, MS would have suffered, Nintendo not so much.  

Also, you are talking about the sales the PS2 got going somewhere.  But the sales of Gen 7 vastly eclipse Gen 6.  260+ million vs less than 200 million.  So the 7th gen totalled out with over 60 million additional sales.  That's where the Wii got its numbers. New customers, second console sales.  Not sales taken from Playstation.  MS got those.  

PS home consoles are generally the most popular consoles and they tend to outsell the competition 2 to 1. Sony overpriced the hell out of the PS3 so alot of people didn't buy it for a long time. Years worth of PS like sales went somewhere and it wasn't just the 360 (as you can see with it's sales). Most of it went to the wii. Sorry but nintendo marketed the wii to casuals, not the typical gamer or nintendo fan. It got what sony lost that gen. Nintendo home consoles don't sell anything close to what the wii did, so something out of the norm happened in the gen with the wii in it and that was the one time sony fumbled one of it's home consoles. You can't explain that by saying nintendo sidestepped sony and ms when it can't even compete against sony's home consoles most of the time.  

Using your logic, Sony only got success because Nintendo screwed up on the N64. Had they used CDs instead of cartridges Playstation would no longer exist. ;) 

it doesn't. You forgot about the PS2 and PS4. Sony can replicate it's massive success in the home console market while nintendo can't. 

MS got the vast majority of Sony's lost sales.  It's patently obvious.  They produced a very similar product, they are in the most direct competition.  If Sony had done better, they would have gotten the lead.  I think probably 120 to 130 million.  Xbox 360 reduced to 40 million.  Wii still nearly the same.  Cause something unusual did happen.  Nintendo tapped into the "cool tech" craze with the motion controls.  They came it with agressive, high quality marketing.  They launched with a GotY title out the gate and closed out its first 12 months with another one.  They came in at a far lower price than the competition.  They side stepped competition with a unique product.  There's numerous reasons the Wii was a sales success.  You keep saying "Nintendo consoles don't sell like that!" but you don't ask why.  The why is what matters. 

But you also have to face the reality that the PS3 wasn't going to match the PS2.  Xbox at the time came on strong.  The 360 was always going to be Sony's biggest competitor up to that time.  Strong third party relations, exceptional design, powerful hardware.  Sony hadn't faced an unhindered oponent up to that time.  Nintendo and Sega thoroughly sabotaged themselves.  And MS with the Xbox also had some key issues holding them back.  The 360 was the firdt unrestrained oponent they faced, they were destined to lose some sales to them, just a question of how many.

*Head explodes*

I disagree with you. Look not only at the Wii, look at the 360, which was doing pretty well, basically on the same level than PS3. This gen though PS4 murders the XBO. Why? Well, Microsoft made some good decisions back then, while Sony failed out of the gate. The launch in the US and Japan was weak, and hadn't been the european launch much stronger, the negativity around the PS3 might have been no longer fightable. But in europe the strong brand name saved the PS3. Still, it struggled. Problems were the price, the complicated architecture with the cell that needed programming especially for PS3. I always say that a different CPU only needs recompiling. In the case of the Cell though workload from the GPU was transferred to the CPU and the additional units, which was completely new programming and thus was completely ignored in the beginning by gamedevs. That resulted in lower performance of multiplats on PS3 in comparison to X360. This changed later in the life of the PS3, as the gamedevs understood the cell and developed the tools to support it properly.

That Sony was able to steer the ship that was the PS3 in a different direction is a big success story by the way. But initial problems as well as the save was all Sony. If that hadn't happened, many of the early X360 purchases would have gone to Sony camp instead. The only reason was that the PS3 wasn't that attrective. You're right in a way though: if the alternative of the X360 wouldn't have existed, the impact on the PS3 hadn't been that bad.