This is basically wrong.

What Sony did with PS1 was to copy Sega of America intuition that Nes userbase was aging and becoming teens so they needed different type of marketing/games.

Genesis/Snes userbase was growing too so SCE focus at first to 16 - 24 year old and then they captured even lower age market thanks to huge PS1 popularity/momentum.

If you consider PS1 household penetration in USA or Japan then you note that its quite similar to Nes one ( keeping in mind demographic growth in that timespan ).

The expansion made by SCE was a geographical one. Before the PS1, european  gaming was mostly under home-computer influence.

Good things did by SCE was to backing up on novel cinematic-trend and  to fix the broke relationship between first and third-party that Nintendo and Sega had at that time.

If VG were really mainstream with PS2 than we would never witness the public resistence of society against VG that are so common on mainstream media.

Although this is an interesting comparison on how successful each of the companies has been over the past several years, the chart is overly simplified and doesn't consider the profit/loss from the Nintendo DS, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy or PSP; with how successful the GBA and Nintendo DS has been, it is likely that the bulk of Nintendo's profit came/comes from those systems and not from the Gamecube or Wii.

What I find even more amusing out of all this "Nintendo made this, Nintendo does that" type of conversation, is that it seems no matter how profitable Nintendo is, they still don't seem to publish many non-Nintendo game, how is Nintendo being profitable benefiting you? Nintendo is hauling so much ass this generation, and they don't honestly seem to have much to show for it :/ Every day we have to hear constant bitching from all sides that the userbase is in favor of Nintendo, yet the games still aren't. Nintendo doing so amazing seems like an empty victory sometimes :( I'd love to see some more genuine motion controlled games >< Start publishing mofo's >_>

 This I agree with.

"But yes, if you only take profits into consideration, then Nintendo beat the PS2 last generation. "

As a company yeah....but i'm pretty sure PS2>>>>>GC in profit.  

i had seen all that info before, but what i never realized is that Sony is actually -146 million dollars since 2001, that's horrible.

 Yeah that's a "funny" figure.

However I agree with whom say that comparing GC "success" and PS2 "success" based on gaming division income without considering what platform made major gains is retarded.

 The fact that Nintendo managed to stay in business (due to their profits) means I get to own a DS and a Wii. I do love Nintendo making a profit.

@Rath, yeah I hear ya, and I can agree with your position there, I just wish they didn't seem so in it for themselves sometimes :/ I'd love for them to take they're gobs of money and produce some new material that might not actually suck from third parties :(

I could be wrong, but I suspect Nintendo learned durring their troubled times that you can't buy success from third party publishers ...

In the last generation Nintendo paid Capcom (although the terms were uncertain, it included Capcom developing the GBA Zelda games and potentially a cash transfer) to create the Resident Evil Remake, Resident Evil 0, to port the other Resident Evil games, and Resident Evil 4; at the end of the day this (massive) deal still didn't help the Gamecube all that much ...

@Happy, yeah, but I still think it was a great effort :) I just like the strong emphasis on diversity amongst the 3rd party developers, I start thinking, if Sony never sucked Ninja Theory up, would I ever have gotten to see Heavenly Sword in that light? Insomniac was always awesome and I thought disruptor was a good game, but with Sony's funding they were able to make some AMAZING titles, same with Naughty Dog, same with many of Sony's minions.

One of my favorite games on the Gamecube was published by Ninty but made by silicon knights ^^ Eternal Darkness was great in my book! I just wish they'd put more effort on trying to snag some titles, it almost seems sometimes like Ninty really doesn't care about the success of third parties, or the customers in terms of functionality, I mean hell the Wii won't play dvd's :( How much more would that honestly have been? They know they're on top, but it rarely seems like they're willing to take a risk to hold it. Super cheap hardware, very little third party publishing, they really only put massive advertisement on they're own titles, etc etc.