I happened upon a thread in the off topic section just as it got locked and thought it was an interesting, but limited discussion point. It only dealt with the specific case of XB vs GC. I wanted to expand on that a bit.

The question originally asked was is it better to be in second place and lose money or in 3rd place and make money?

I wanted to expand on that. Instead of just simply considering place vs money, what about place vs money vs reputation? Lets say you come in dead last, and lose a lot of money, but you establish yourself as a solid console with some really inventive and catchy first party titles that run on it. This would be bad in the short term, but that reputation could be a far bigger advantage in leveraging for the next console. Of course, this also depends on still having enough money to be able to come out with teh next console.

So what about everyone else? For me, it's Reputation 1st, Money 2nd, and Place 3rd, but i could easily see that people might feel money is more important, on the basis that if you lose too much of it, you won't be able to produce the things that keep your reputation. The way I see it is that you aren't going to make money in teh gaming industry unless you devote yourself to establishing and maintaining a good reputation.

I'd say 3rd and make money. If only because of the Wii.

Nintendo's reputation was at all time lows before the Wii came out... and was in 3rd place. A lot of people were predicting this would be Nintendos last console and they'd go to handheld.

Now they're suddenly leading in all three categories.

So if your going to take a hit... you might as well make money doing it.

With reputation I am assuming you are alluding the the Xbox. You need reputation, sure, but what companies ultimately want is money. Rep is a means to an end and that end is money!

Nintendo is consistently in the best position therefore. The worst that can happen to them is that they could be marginalized. Nintendo can make heaps of money selling their own console at a profit and making their own games. 3rd party support is gravy that draws in some profit but makes more people but their console.

If Nintendo's next console completly failed and got no support, Nintendo would likely make the 2nd most money still.

Therefore, the only way Nintendo could ever stop making consoles is if it was more profitable to make games 3rd party then to profitably sell hardware AND sell their own games. Considering Nintendo has 10 million or so fans who will buy their system just for their games, this will only happen if Nintendos quality takes a nosedive, and if that happens any game company is screwed.

Depends on the company.

For Nintendo, I guess it is Money > Reputation > Place.

They have enough reputation, and they do nothing but video-games, so they can't afford a down-gen or two.

Now, they need reputation to keep their sales going. The fact that all magazines used Playstation or Xbox as examples for gaming analogies, hurt Nintendo last gen.

For Sony, they appear to be fairly even, but I guess Place > Reputation > Money for them.

After all, they accepted earning little money last gen, to get rep/place.

For Microsoft, it is definately Reputation > Place > Money

They're establishing themselves, and only next gen they are likely to really care for money.

Personally, I feel it goes Money > (add 40 > if you want to) Place > Reputation