MS has a great foundation to build on. They are still in a good position and I think that its possible but Nintendo has over 30 years of experience and a catalog of games and franchises like no other. If Nintendo is complacent and they refuse to give consumers what they want such as a decent online experience and HD graphics, they may fall behind.

MS needs to build on Xbox Live and XBLA. They really need to sell the idea of their console as a multimedia device and Netflix is a great addition. I like the position they are in but you can't count out Sony as the Playstation brand is still strong. It will be an interesting generation.

 No... that's wrong... I can drive my truck just as easy as my sudan, but I assure you that driving that truck is still harder than driving that sudan...

"You can't win without Japan"

What bollocks.

Ok so lets say (by some freaky coincidence) Playstation 3 had 5 million consoles sold in that reagion, 360 had 2 million and the Wii completly failed with 2 million.

WW Totals ?

Wii would still be ahead of its closest rival by 11 million.

And that would pretty much be worst case scenario for Wii in Japan.

You need Europe, America and UK to win IMO.

Seems very unlikely if you ask me The Wii 2 could be even more dominant than the Wii for all we know. And Sony won't make the PS4 $200 more expensive than the 720 and release it a year later. After being dethroned by Nintendo and their own foolish mistakes, I think Sony have learned their lesson. So I see Nintendo or Sony on top next gen with MS in 3rd.

I think if you're answer isn't "its a 3 horse race" or "Wii 2" then you're pretty ignorant to the whole situation.

And your fanboyism shines through .......

It's true that Japan doesn't hold the weight that it used to however the OP is talking about dominance. Dominance means not just selling the most consoles but also being the most successful across all regions. And in that respect I do not foresee Microsoft having the Worldwide success of the Wii or the PS1/PS2.

BTW UK is a part of Europe although it is the country in Europe with the largest console market individually.

edit- And just to add for all the talk about the shrinking Japanese market so far they have bought close to 8 million wiis and just under 3 million PS3s. And these figures would likely have been higher were it not for Sony's blunders and the great shift to handhelds which is evident by the massive success of the DS and the relative success of the PSP in Japan.

These trends can change in the future and home consoles could possibly regain their place. So as much as you may like for Japan to be a non deciding factor in domination I would argue that it is.

Wii sure did bite them bad in that case.

Japan is a handheld territory now, consoles are secondary there... If M$ wants to get the Japanese market they need to realese a handheld with tons of rpgs, anime games, super niche games, casual games and strange games and make the xbox 3 sell as xbox portable complement.

Faulty analysis. The original XBox was only a success in a limited sense. Was it true that Microsoft intentionally planned to lose 4 billion U.S. dollars on their first system? No one plans to lose that much money. Stockholders simply won't stand for it. Microsoft expected to make a breakthrough with the system the 1st time around but plans didn't work out that way. And any smart company has a backup plan just in case the frontline fails. This is why companies are working on their next system as soon as their current system is released.

In terms of holding a portion of the home console marketshare pie chart, they were more successful than Nintendo's Gamecube but that's only if you count a company's marketshare by one system. In the worldwide company marketshare, Nintendo fueled by the power of the GBA still owned about half of the marketshare pie.

Check out this dramatic recounting of total company market representation in the videogame sector in Japan alone between the years 1996-2007. They break down total unit representation by each company's systems & then combine them all in their respective companies:

History of Video Games Marketshare in Japan 1996-2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdpMv5FjQ5M

Nintendo had so many systems running concurrently that when added together they combined to give Nintendo healthy market representation overall as a company. If you look solely at the home console front then they had problems but Nintendo does not exist solely in the home console section. We've been led to believe that home consoles are the "main platform" & handhelds are the "secondary platform" but in Japan it's pretty much the opposite now which is why Sony decided to even make the PSP hoping to run Nintendo off their last trump card. And remember that clip only showed Japan marketshare. Worldwide marketshare is a whole other thing. And looking at North American or even more narrowly U.S. marketshare you'd get a different picture again.

But marketshare representation while important is not the whole story. A business is supposed to make money or eventually it can't fund the production of the things it makes. The main competitors in our current VG story are:

(1) Nintendo, Ltd. as a whole since they primarily make videogames with toys & playing cards in the minority.
(2) Sony Corp.'s Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. or in other words Sony's gaming branch since Sony Corp. is in so many businesses.
(3) Microsoft Corp.'s Entertainment and Devices Division specifically what holds XBox development on both hardware & software. Microsoft has no clear "gaming division" like Sony does since other products fall under this branch like Zune, Windows CE, not to mention computer game production, another portion of the whole digital electronic gaming market which is too vast to count.

When looking towards the profitability of the 3, Nintendo always landed on top. Microsoft leveraged its muscle from its computer operating system monopoly to subsidize & sustain its XBox adventure. Any other company would have been bankrupt from the original XBox's financial failure. Of course some of that $4 billion was part Zune as well but it's no mistake that XBox 1 caused the grand majority of that waste. Sony with the record success of their PS1 & PS2 didn't profit as well in comparison to their sales success. The problems of the PS3 were inevitable based on how their business model was set up.

You are right to say that Microsoft was successful in getting that brand embedded in customers' minds & gained a feel for the business (they would have to in order to work in this field). I remember before the 360 came out how PS1/PS2 owners wanted an "XBox". I said long ago that brand name goes a long way & their short X filled name was sure to become meme-able. "XBox" was already its own brand entity & the "360" on top made it seem more advanced and new.

But Microsoft is gonna learn a difficult lesson this year when they face Nintendo all alone. Sony's done for the 7th gen. Microsoft (& the 3rd party devs) broke their backs for good last year. Microsoft already recognizes how formidable Nintendo is & may or may not recognize how Nintendo has just gotten started. Nintendo's profit-first affordable-to-the-customer business model is paying off in Ace card spades with TWO record selling systems that are destined to become the best-selling systems of all time (forget the influential aspects of the WiiDS Phenomenon). They can fund the "bailouts" themselves with all that money.

They shouldn't have made the mistake of RRoD the second go around; the original XBox was a sturdier system. Their approach for the 7th gen was to consider Sony the King of the VG Business which shows they may not really understand this business. This is why they forgot about Nintendo as a competitor and overlooked the so-called "Casual" audiences. They were competing against Sony with high-stakes tech fights not realizing that Sony was always the paper tiger in the room. By the way, Cell for all intents & purposes came out for the XBox 360 BEFORE the PS3 even launched—never mind that Xenon label. Ask IBM engineers David Shippy & Mickie Phipps who helped designed Cell (it's in a new book called "The Race for a New Game Machine". Read this article from Wall Street Journal). This is why we're not seeing a major difference between graphics on XBox 360 & PS3.

Nintendo is the King of the VG Business & that lesson will be hammered home in 2009. The introduction of NXE was Microsoft's official recognizance of this fact & they are playing catchup believe it or not. Microsoft's views for the industry will not hold water. Most powerful console never mattered in this business. You still believe it matters despite what Wii & DS have proven & are still proving to you each & every day. You still think it's good to have different models for the same system or SKUs despite what we're seeing with Wii's one & only model running off the shelves. Consoles are NOT SUPPOSED to be high end electronics. If you're gonna do all that then just get a PC & modify it to your specifications.

You've made a grave mistake with this following view right here. I'll quote you:

This is the most fundamental MISUNDERSTANDING of what a console is supposed to be. Consoles in reality shouldn't exist. If not for the NES, we would all be playing games on the PC. You gotta understand the lessons of the North American VG market crash of 1983/1984. Videogaming suddenly went out of style as a business enterprise and if not for the NES, it would not have survived as a pastime in a broad sense. Certainly not enough able to influence & reshape the culture like it has. Home consoles from the very beginning were focused on families not technology. Technology was a tool not the driving reason for existence. It was the highway, the medium on how the game creators' ideas could influence how the families interacted with each other through the device.

Gaming consoles were ALWAYS specialized computers focused on gaming functions. The PC is a general purpose computer designed to run a variety of functions which is why gaming on those devices has to be low key without customization to the internals. There is always a market for those who like to tinker about with PCs for gaming but most people don't want all that fuss and prefer to use a game device more like an appliance (like a toaster or microwave): pop it in & you're done. The fact that the high-end PC market struggles for profitability is part because of the high knowledge of its users (who are more able to bypass code and refuse to buy retail) and part because of the complicated nature of the input (keyboards) & internal machinery. Plus comfort factors come into play with PCs. They are prone to be played solitary in an office chair rather than in a group on a couch. This is why so many from the PC world come over to the console world to make money.

The line between PC & console ain't blurring as much as you think. Else I would primarily use my Internet Channel on my Wii for all my web browsing needs instead of my desktop I'm typing to you on. Microsoft got into the business fighting Sony over this all-in-one media box ideal & while they have probably run Sony off from this fight, that ideal won't be happening anytime soon. The biggest reason it hasn't is simply the way people assign functionality to a certain device. Sure you CAN use this device to perform this function but you feel more comfortable using this one instead. Or they just find one device better than the other for their needs. It's why PSP's multimedia abilities didn't help it beat the DS with its touchscreen & microphone "gimmicks". Same reason why PS3's Blu-ray capabilities ain't increasing its sales in comparison to the standalone Blu-ray players that sell.

And the functions of a device also influence the shape as well as the cost of such a device. The buttons on a cell phone are good for typing in numbers but bad for finding the right button to hit an attack on Street Fighter II. The small size of that cellphone makes it good for playing Bejewled on the fly but bad for a game with the atmosphere of Resident Evil. The high-tech of a gaming PC takes some money with the wild west nature of computer resource standards in PC game design. While the relative low cost and standardized resources of a console allows for more people to be receptible to the platform.

Microsoft will follow Nintendo's lead in the next generation if they want to survive. XBox 360 is certainly an improvement over XBox but it still has not really fulfilled its mission as a platform. Apple's sneaking around the VG industry & maybe a few unseen others. If Microsoft fights these old tech-minded fights they will have learned nothing & the 3rd time around will be the last when those strategies bring no improvement.

There really is no such thing as "casual" and "hardcore". There are people who prefer to different things to play. Nintendo sees past all of these labels for the only one that matters: "Everybody". The fact that they didn't go ahead & make Zune a handheld gaming device shows that they might not have what it takes to go the distance in the videogame market. Japan still matters even though other regions have picked up in importance. You can only subsidize the XBox for so long & their OS monopoly may not be as secure as they thought either. Somebody disrupts that & it's a whole new ballgame.

The 7th gen will be extended past the usual 5 years. 8th gen will redefine what a console means and maybe more.

John Lucas

That's a little close minded. Although a strong argument can be made for any of the 3 companies, I feel that Microsoft may have the edge. Does that make me a fanboy for having an opinion backed by facts and logic? 

Wii 2 - Although I think the Wii will be successful, it may go the way of the N64. Nintendo refused to keep up with technology and ended up losing their empire. Casual gamers are not loyal to a company. In fact, most casual gamers I know decided to buy a Wii after the advice of a hardcore gamer. Also, what will Nintendo do for the Wii 2? Same motion controllers? New controller that may fail to bring people in? If anything, I think Nintendo should be sweating a little. I don't think they will be able to match the phenomena that was the Wii.