The Switch 8 years in the market had it be the best selling system in 4 of them (2019 to 2022), so 50% of its lifecycle.

The PS4 7 years in the market had it be the best selling system in 5 of them (2014 to 2018), ~71,5% of its lifecycle.

The PS5 4 years up until now it had been the best selling system in 2 of them and we are about to discover if the PS5 or the Switch 2 was the best selling system for 2025, which would be PS5 5th year, so either 40% or 60% of its lifecycle up until now.

So even in the last 10 years or so, with the Switch sucess, a Playstation system was the market leader more often than not, not the opposite.

Nintendo systems have the biggest peak sales, that are much higher, but are not the market leaders more often than not.

Going back and including all kinds of hardware sales, when Nintendo was still supporting 2 simultaneous systems, yeah, historically Nintendo itself as a whole was the market leader for A LOT of the time.

Well, here we are back the topic of every fanbase spinning things to their advantage, haha. I literally posted the related graphs above.

If we combine all console sales (not only the current generation console, or only home consoles, or only handhelds, or whatever) in a given year (which, IMO, is the only logical way to determine hardware market share) what we get is that in the past 27 years Nintendo sold the most consoles in 16 of those years. Sony sold the most consoles in 7 of those years and there was a virtual tie in 4 years. That's what I meant. (subject to error, of course - I'm not doing this for a living, haha).

Of course, you are free to argue that 3DS sales shouldn't count anymore in 2017 because the Switch released in that year, or whatever. But personally, I think looking at the graphs I posted above (every console sold by a manufacturer in a given year) is the best way to determine it. The Switch is still selling in 2025, so if Switch 1+2 outsell PS5, Nintendo has outsold Sony this year. Same goes for 2028, when both a PS5 and PS6 will compete against just one Nintendo console, btw!

Edit: Nintendo also outsold Sony for 5 consecutive years this/last generation, from 2018 to 2022.

Oh damn does this mean that nintendo has 16 championships and sony has 7?

Well, here we are back the topic of every fanbase spinning things to their advantage, haha. I literally posted the related graphs above.

If we combine all console sales (not only the current generation console, or only home consoles, or only handhelds, or whatever) in a given year (which, IMO, is the only logical way to determine hardware market share) what we get is that in the past 27 years Nintendo sold the most consoles in 16 of those years. Sony sold the most consoles in 7 of those years and there was a virtual tie in 4 years. That's what I meant. (subject to error, of course - I'm not doing this for a living, haha).

Of course, you are free to argue that 3DS sales shouldn't count anymore in 2017 because the Switch released in that year, or whatever. But personally, I think looking at the graphs I posted above (every console sold by a manufacturer in a given year) is the best way to determine it. The Switch is still selling in 2025, so if Switch 1+2 outsell PS5, Nintendo has outsold Sony this year. Same goes for 2028, when both a PS5 and PS6 will compete against just one Nintendo console, btw!

Edit: Nintendo also outsold Sony for 5 consecutive years this/last generation, from 2018 to 2022.

Interesting sidenote, no company in history has 3peated yet.

Virtual Boy, 64DD, WiiU...?

I'm not arguing neither spinning, I'm also giving the metric of the actual best selling product as the market leader, without disregarding the data as a whole, as it's also data.

Of course the 3DS and the Switch and every single Nintendo device counts for their overall total combined sales of the year, that's all from Nintendo.

Was any of those systems the actual market leading product though? In many years yes, in many others no, that's what I pointed. When talking about market leaders, there are many metrics, as many others pointed in the thread too, there is others like money, which itself can be either revenue or profit, etc.

Or generations don't make sense because of out of cycle launches.  

ps4: 2013

switch: 2017

ps5: 2020

Switch is close to being equally between the ps4 and ps5, so what generation is it?  Answer should be, who ****ing cares?  But staying on topic, there isn't a clean answer.  Everyone is going to have a difference of opinion.  

Plus, while console gamers are warring, Steam and Epic have 225,000,000 monthly active users.  

Edit

ps5: 2020

Switch 2: 2025

ps6(?): 2028

Again, what generation is the Switch 2?  Heck if I know.  I do know it has great games; I own one and I don't work for Nintendo.

I am realizing now, if Switch 2 sell more than PS5 then logical reasoning will align with console warring and Switch 1 and 2 will be considered 9th and 10th gen systems just to give the win for PS4 on 8th gen. Thats is just how pathetically the internet rolls

it matters because we need to know in which generation nintendo won.

throughout the entirety of the 7th generation on vgchartz, it was clear that nintendo won the generation. yes, people tried to discredit the championship in a variety of different ways, it happened basically every day on here. and the same thing is happening in this thread, so in that respect, nothing has changed.

there are some people who have a difficult time with their company not winning, and i completely understand that. during 2014, 2015, 2016, it was tough. ps4 was selling like crazy even though their first year was remasters which i found to be very frustrating. and then because of nintendo's poor marketing, it didnt matter that we had a lot of great games in 2014, we got absolutely dominated by sony. but you know what? i dealt with it. i didnt make excuses, i dealt with reality. it seems whenever its our turn to win, everybody wants to discredit it and say it isnt deserved. the crazy thing that nobody saw coming was that nintendo was going to make a comeback and actually win the 8th generation. its a crazy story of the underdog that came back and claimed victory. thats why it matters what generation it is. i understand its ambiguous and i wouldnt necessarily fault somebody for saying switch is a 9th gen console, however, i cant help but feel that people are labeling it 9th gen because they spent the first half of the 8th gen thinking they had it wrapped up only to have victory snatched in the late hours. it never feels good to be walked off when you had a 8 or 9 run lead earlier in the game, but thats exactly what happened. and i think that is a hard thing for some people to cope with. 

anyway, i will toast to a fair game here in the 9th generation. ps5 has sold an incredible amount of consoles, 100 million is a lock for them. 100 million is nowhere near a lock for switch 2, although we have a promising start. id really like to just shake hands and say fair game without any bs or any discrediting. lets just see who wins.