With the ever mounting complexities the console market has continued to evolve with, thanks in large part to the rapid development of technology and corporate giants making muscle multi-media machines out of their units, we are seeing an increasing amount of spin these days.

So in attempts to cut through all the rhetoric of fanboys and the companies themselves, I pose this question to our community:

How do you define “winning” in this day and age for the console wars?

Does having the most amount of units constitute winning? Or perhaps, for example, less units overall but more profits? Or both? Or even the highest percentage of overall market-share growth? Etc. Etc.

Please do try and keep your cognitive dissonance at the door before answering: I do have a feeling that when profiling answers for this question it will not be too hard to see how someone looks at the gaming market overall.

P.S. I’ll share my take on this after the thread starts to get going, as I don’t wish to influence the direction it heads initially.

Your going to get about 50 million answers, because each person has an idea of what winning is...Winning for the Wii might be sales of 30m, or 130m, who knows.

My opinion on winning is totally based on what system we're talking about.

For the Wii, I think winning is procuring a large marketshare, and keeping the Wii hardware profitable. Ultimately, Nintendo is the only true video game company, in the fact that 90% of their business comes from the sale of videogames. Nintendo wins by keeping profitable. I'd say if they can manage $250m/yr in profits every year between DS and Wii divisions, they've won. $250m a year is good no matter what kind of business your in. I'd say good # goals to "win" would be 50m h/w for the Wii (basically a major next-gen contender, and obviously very profitable), and 100m for the DS (GB-like levels of sales). This should keep Nintendo afloat for years to come.

For Sony, I would say winning (at this unfortunate stage of the game) is to make the Playstation 3 profitable at some point. I do feel that Blu-Ray will help keep the multimedia aspect of the company afloat (and I am now realizing that BR in the PS3 really did help push the format to beat HD-DVD quite a bit). Ultimately, the PS3 needs to make Sony money by 2012, by atleast making Sony around ~$50m over it's lifetime (after its massive losses for the PS3 are taken out of the equasion). It will also win by winning the format wars, as that should allow the entertainment divison (or whatever division controls BR players), to make money. 50m h/w should get them there, but barely.

For Microsoft, winning is to be (like Nintendo) profitable by 2012, on a major scale, and have themselves setup with atleast 40m h/w units sold to consumers, so when the NextBox comes out, it has a fairly large w/w fanbase, and can improve. Microsoft doesn't need the cash that the Xbox can provide, but it does need the system to start holding it's own, rather than Uncle Bill's Wallet holding the system up. Microsoft also needs some major software sales for it's 1st and 2nd party titles to start doing amazingly. Rare needs a few more 1m+ sellers. Lionhead, Bungie and Turn 10 all need major major sellers, and Bizzare needs alot too. Ultimately, if MS can make the hardware profitable, and start to churn out alot of great and profitable 1st/2nd party games, it'll nail that mark, and then they (like Nintendo) can move in for their end game in 2012-2020 and become the next Playstation 1/2's.

Mr. Stickball -- Thanks for the concise answers.

And your correct on stating that there will be limitless answers to this question.

I want to take the moment to attempt to possibly clarify and add some minor, yet important, details to my previously posed question and toss in my two cents while at it.

Proving that reality is subjective for each company isn't my goal of this thread, as I think we all deal enough with corporate thinking in day-to-day life to figure this to be a bona-fide variable, rather wish to know what the gamer thinks "Winning" is ultimately these days.

As each console has its own differences and is marketed at different sectors of the market share. As such, each company obviously has different goals and thus a different definition of success.

I think this is why with the addition of the multi-media behemoths consoles are becoming, this question is getting harder to answer, as really the gaming market has been a Trojan horse for OTHER markets. Hence, if you fail as turning money out of the your companies division from games, yet can make profits on different ends as a result ( for example Blu-Ray ), then do you really "lose?"

I feel the last generation of consoles we saw the dawn of this type of thinking in the market. Essentially, each company was sounding the trumpets of success due to different goals met on their own personal ladders, and personally, I don't think we will see this stop.

It seems to me that there isn't much these days beyond sheer dominance that will constitute a certified "win" anymore. That is, the most consoles units sold, the most software sold, the largest growth of market share, and of course the largest profits.

Funny thing is, even if Nintendo happens to tap into some blue oceans of which the big boys couldn't do on their own this gen, it seems the likes of corporate giants can gain some leverage from all this:

As the market place grows ( I.E. more gamers), there is a larger base of consumers who will bear the brunt of the costs for the new "fad technology" (Like Blu-Ray or HD-DVD), to which the big fish use as the initial wave of consumers to drum down costs for the new fancy technology.

Once this is established, these giants can gain a virtual monopoly on the new technology in which to make a killing off of, even if their gaming devisions do poorly on their own.

I agree. I think that with the huge expansion and prominence of the internet, broadband capabilities, and various other outlets, that for each company, multimedia and DLC is a more lucrative and profitable market for many companies, and atleast in Sony/MS, their video game divisions are more intertwined with other entities.

For MS, XBLA is a huge issue of profitablility. I'd say on an equal level with actual X360 hardware. Why? At $4/mo, and 4m+ gold users (or so), buying content, it's a very lucrative market. If hardware was being sold at a loss, would it matter if each customer was buying hundreds of USD worth of content a year (and MS getting a % of the profits from each thing for bandwidth, which turns a profit)? On XBLA, you can download movies, watch trailers, get demos, ect, ect, ect. MS makes cash on ALL of that. It's very lucrative.

For Sony, the Blu-Ray issue is huge. It's obvious (atleast to me) that it's a big selling point for many video and audiophiles in various countries, and made the Blu-Ray format much more viable vs. HD-DVD (not that it wasn't in the beggining, but when you have an extra 3.6m sold BR players, it tends to help a bit). How does Sony factor that in? Do they at all? Simply put, Sony's entire goal for the PS3 might of just been pushing Blu-Ray, as they felt that licensing the BR-DVD technology would be more profitable in the end. Of course, that's speculation. Also, like XBLA, licensing alot of Sony movies for download could be VERY VERY VERY lucrative. Sony pictures is HUGE. What if Sony was able to start making lots of money in-house with Sony movies downloadable on the PS3 like XBL is doing right now? Unlike MS's cash, they wouldn't make money merely off of the bandwidth, the entire corpotation would make huge amounts of money, as 100% of revenue would stay in-house.

Likewise, Nintendo has a huge advantage with VC. ROM piracy has been huge for the past few years for NES, SNES, and various older titles. Nintendo can never stop it, as the internet has always had (and will always) have a way around the ISDA and lawyers. VC has done remarkably for Nintendo, and having a huge VC library is very lucrative - do you think that during the GameCube years that Super Mario 1, or old NES games sold 1m+ copies? Unlike many other things, even XBLA, VC titles will always sell - and always make Nintendo, millions of dollars. Think about it, at $5 (a very low average), Nintendo has already sold somewhere near 5m VC titles. I'd say a vast majority were Nintendo IPs, therefore they make 100% of the profits. It's not like porting the Mario NES and SNES games were expensive, so the vast majority of the sales are big profits.


Ultimately, one day we'll see VGChartz start with virtual sales via VC, XBLA and PSN. When that day comes (I wish it was tommorow), we'll see the second front of the console wars open up. Regardless, whats only a few million dollars today will wind up being a mult-billion dollar industry (content/game downloads) in 5 years.

"Simply put, Sony's entire goal for the PS3 might of just been pushing Blu-Ray, as they felt that licensing the BR-DVD technology would be more profitable in the end."

I think that´d be the case...with this move,Sony may indeed end up securing BD as DVD´s successor,but it seems to be coming at the expense of the PS brand losing its dominance in games.

Winning in the market is the company that can hold the most market share. The generation of consoles market-share isnt as important as overall market-share anymore thanks to Sony not discontinuing the PS2.

Jounin - to Sony, the Playstation's just another thing to make money off of, nothing more. Corporations are faceless, careless entities. What makes more money? Billions of Blu-Ray disks, and licensing fees for hundreds of million BR-ROM players/diodes, ect, and inventing/cornering the market on the format war, or the a hundred-million selling Playstation brand name.

IMO, all it'd take to revive the PS brandname is a $300 price drop, and nothing more. Sony knows it too. Thats why they act like buttholes so often. Each console is a master of its destiny, but Sony and MS know that there's far more to the war than just games, as its connected to the TV for movies (which rivals the VG industry dollar for dollar), and the internet (which greatly exceedes the VG and Movie Market), therefore Sony is taking the easier format/media disk route, and MS is taking the hard, but more profitable internet route. Nintendo is taking the gaming route, and killing everyone rather easily (in profits).

But again, if Sony/MS make a few extra billion USD off of their PS and Xbox brand names via net, movies, and format licensing, thats what matters to a corporation....Overall profits.

profits, sales and game library are the three big factors in my opinion of who wins

IF the company can return to battle in the next generation, the company has won, because it has lasted the war. My 2 cents.

Winning is beating the final level...

Duh...

Oh wait, f*ck...