I'm with maximusoptimus on this one.

  The problem here is that these divisions all include sources of income other than that from the sale of home consoles.  Sony Game Division has revenue from it’s PSP.  Nintendo’s operating income includes the Gameboy and DS.  And Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division includes PC games and the Zune among other things.  Even with these extra incomes included I still believe that a comparison between the three companies at this level is appropriate.  For those that care, detailed operating income numbers and links to the sources used are available at the end of this article.

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The guy actually adressed this and said that all the divisions had other income but I guess none of you botherd to read the excellent article and just jumped to the graphs. Nothing missleading here he says it all upfront.

@ vaio )

he addressed it (and I didn't read it) but comes to a different conclusion than me - in my opinion the influences of sources of operating income (pos and neg) other than just GC, PS2 and Xbox are far too huge in the graphs/numbers he used to get a good picture of who "won" the consoles generation profits wise (ok it's clear the Xbox came in as distant 3rd)

If you look at the graphs and take this info to account the it´s pretty clear that PS 2 won over GC but overall Nintendo is the clear winner because of their strategy and the console war is won or lost depending on how their gaming division actually do and not the separate console in question unless one looks at this with a fanboys eyes and only concerns himself with his console of choice.

Is this article really surprising here on VGC ?
We had these kind of datas and even more ( SCE from 1996 on ward, Nintendo from 1981 on ward ) from quite a few months ( or years ...).
Nintendo was always insanely profitable even in their darkest period.
They never had a yearly loss, this is their true talent.

Nintendo is the only VG company that can change the industry thanks to the close relationship between its software division and hardware division ( Nintendo is a software house that design the hardware they want), they are little overall despite their insane profit so they can shift company goals and philosopy quickly and can take risk because they always had some billion dollar in bank ( Nintendo is famous for doing what they want ).

John Lucas may say : "Nintendo is the industry".

This article is riddled with inaccuracies:

The guy claims that sony got such high PS2 sales numbers by giving the system away for free (!), despite the actual number of consoles given away being statistically insignificant.

He claims that "in 1983 everybody ran out of money when the public stopped buying games and the entire industry crashed" which is also inaccurate. The public didn't stop buying games, and the entire industry didn't crash. It only affected America, and it was entirely due to over-investment (flooding the market), not declining sales.

Sega was never the market leader. Even when the Dreamcast released without any 6th gen competition, it was being outsold significantly by the PS1.

He ignores the fact that Nintendo's profits primarily come from handhelds, while Sony's come from home consoles (both of which are included, among other things, in the profit/loss statements, despite the fact he is only talking about home console sales). Clearly, a comparison between the three companies at this level is NOT appropriate. (@ VAIO: you obviously ignore the title claim that "PlayStation 2 May Have Won Last Generation’s Sales Battle, but it Lost the Console War")

He ignores the fact that both Sony and Microsoft acquired billions in assets through the purchase of development studios, while Nintendo sold their most important and expensive developer to MS. The sale of Rare alone accounts for -$377m to MS and +$377m to Nintendo.

Needless to say, MS didn't generate losses of $4b+ by loss-leading alone. Companies like Rare and Lionhead do not come cheap. Likewise, the 20 (approx) studios picked up by Sony undoubtedly cost more than $146.47m, meaning that PS2 profits have not been wiped out by the PS3 (obviously).

If he is claiming that Nintendo are good at making money, then he is right on the... er... money, but his suggestion that the GC made more profit than the PS2 is not only wrong, but ridiculous. It is mathematically implausible.

Such a simplistic comparison of profit/loss statements is essentially worthless.

I didn´t ignore the title and I never said it was all gospel some of the concole number were wrong too he has MS at 19M and Nintendo at 24M and that is clearly wrong too. All I said was:

Nintendo is the clear winner because of their strategy and the console war is won or lost depending on how their gaming division actually do and not the separate console in question unless one looks at this with a fanboys eyes and only concerns himself with his console of choice.

Funny enough the company selling the most this time around is making the most profits by a long way.

Correction: It's quality in the games that matter most. I wish gamers on websites would stop looking at these "console wars" as how company a is doing against company b. The more money they make =/= better games, not at all. If anything, it's the opposite to keep the companies hungry for competition.

It pretty much fails to take into account the bigger picture of what money other companies and developers made off the consoles. I'm sure when overall game sales are taken into account then people like EA made a lot more money off ps2 gamesales than they did GC gamesales. But we always knew Nintendo were great at turning a profit. So I'm not overly suprised.

@Celine

I think it would be wrong to say Nintendo are the only ones who can change the industry. The PS1 and PS2 really helped video games go from entertainment for nerds to mainstream acceptance. A trend which Nintendo has really caught onto and run with.