Well, in America at least.

i disagree...

...they've been that way from before the wii in my opinion. even when sony were dominating, nintendo were still a bigger brand now that i think of it. 

I would consider it a failure because 1. it went from 2nd last gen to 3rd this gen, and 2. it had a considerable lead in 2nd place before falling to 3rd.

If the 360 does fall to 3rd place, the gap will just grow and grow until it's in 3rd by far.

If the PS3 stays in 3rd place, the gap between it and the 360 will be very very small by the end of the current gen.

That being said, with as big a lead as they were able to get, they have to stay in 2nd to be considered successful. I'm already ready to crown it unsuccessful based on RROD, but I'll wait til the end of the current gen to determine that because it's too early imo.

In the gaming industry... yes... in the world (counting other industries)... not even close...

maybe...

anyway, microsoft may have been much more succesful this gen, but for some reason, i can't see them ever having that 'here to stay' status. i know a lot of people are going to disagree with me, and i accept that because it's only my opinion, but i really think the ms won't be seeing any better than third ever, if they don't come second this gen.

sony made HUGE mistakes this gen, and ms could have taken advantage, but somehow ms let sony get back on their feet. now sony have learnt from their mistakes and it's going to be hard to catch them off gaurd like that again. 

Yes because they will come out of this generation with a higher install base than the last.

well there not going to loose horribly welll thats what i think even if they do loose they made alot of improvements with the xbox 360 and forced sony to make psn better

I think MS is here to stay, just like sony the came from a different side of the industry but made a big devotion to gaming, MS would not have started putting millions after millions into the Xbox if they didn´t have long term plans...

Sony made a lot of mistakes this gen but there was no way MS could have completely destroyed them... last gen sony more than twice as much as MS and Nintendo combined... that brand name and the dev support was a huge advantage... still  now they are fighting for 3rd and Nintendo went from dead last to unbeatable titan... this gen shows that no matter what you did last gen no advantage or disadvantage will make or break the next generation...

Nah.

It depends. There are several points of view here.

The first one would be profit. It they make any profit at all, it should probably be considered a success due to the losses the first Xbox caused. However, given the not-so-bad start of X360, I'd be willing to demand more. They had a good start and have been doing pretty well so far and thus they need to make even more profit or the rest of the generation will be considered a failure. Anyway, this really depends on their objective.

The second point of view is market share. Right now it would seem they really want to be the second, not the last, but at this rate they'll probably end up being the last anyway. Also, I can't see there any reason in trying to have market share itself. Of course they might be making the brand well known to provide a good base for the next console. Or maybe they're counting on software sales even if they lose money on selling consoles. I don't know. Could be both, could be either, could be neither.

The last point of view would be preventig Sony from being successful. Why would they want that? Well, I've not read very much about this but it does make some sense. There's the chance they're afraid that Sony and PlayStation will become a threat to Windows - MS's source of money, that is. With PlayStation becoming more and more of a computer for a casual user (net, multimedia, games etc.), there will be less need for a seperate computer unless you need something more complicated. Right now PS is not a very big threat (even though you can install a new OS on the PS3) but who knows what the future will bring along... Definitely Sony seems to have the direction MS could be afraid of. Anyway, from this point of view Xbox has proved more or less successful though MS will probably want even more.

A tought question really. Depends on a few things so there's probably no definite answer.