A brief history of the who, when, and why of the media's declarations of doom and gloom throughout the generation (as it started with DS's release, circa November 2004), as well as a prediction as to how long the currently doomed party will remain so, and who will take their place
1. Nintendo, November 2004 to May 2006. This period of doom was begun with the rather slow release of the DS, while all media attention was on the PSP, believed at the time to be the sign of Sony expanding their conquest into the handheld arena, and the fall of Nintendo's last outpost of relevance in the industry. Nintendo's doom expanded into their next-gen console space as various analysts forecasted Revolution marketshare as somewhere in the teens, and everyone assumed that Revolution would be an also-ran. This level of scorn only increased when Nintendo unveiled the (at the time) idiotic "Wii," name, in April 2006 (i think). Nintendogs and Mario Kart DS really kicked the DS into gear in late 2005, but the gaming community didn't really catch on to the coming dominance of the DS until the revolutionary events of E3 2006, the momentous event that brought Nintendo out of the doghouse and into the limelight as a return to form for the manufacturer.
2. Sony, May 2006 to December 2007. Every PS3 fanboy still rages whenever someone brings up the now-archaic argument of the PS3 having no games, or being ludicrously overpriced. This is the era that those sentiments propagated. It started with the infamous Sony keynote at E3 2006, where many Sony executives launched what later became many memorable memes. $599 US Dollars, Ridge Racer, and Giant Enemy Crabs. It is widely believed that the great Ken Kutaragi's career was ended by mistakes made at this event and immediately after. Sony appeared very arrogant, as well. In the ensuing time, nothing appeared to really alleviate the problems that emerged. 360 kept poaching old Sony exclusives, PS3 sales didn't get off the ground, and the PSP was beginning to be heavily steamrolled by DS. Also on the PSP front, this was when Sony fought a rather embarrassing fight against PSP Piracy, where their patches were famously thwarted hours after they were launched. This period of doom didn't end all at once, rather it came from two sources: Sony's gradual accumulation of a great library for the PS3, and the manner in which the PS3 began to close the sales gap with 360 worldwide, so i put a rough date on it at the end of 2007
3. Microsoft, January 2008 to September 2008
This period wasn't particularly truncated by Microsoft doing anything wrong, as with Sony's period of "doom," but more from an impending sense of it's being surrounded by hostile forces. Sales stagnated across that time-frame, and the PS3 was beginning to play catch-up. This period wasn't particularly dramatic. It was more a period of hope for Sony supporters, and the only time until the immediate present that the PS3 moving into second place seemed like a distinct possibility, up until Microsoft's genius price-drop of September 2008, bringing the Arcade down into that $200 sweet-spot.
4. Sony, September 2008 to June 2009.
The most recent run of Sony doom came after the 360 price-drop shattered any ideas of a big PS3 comeback for the time being, and fairly significant financial troubles for Sony overall, as well as the continuing lack of profitability for the Computer Entertainment division, The doom mills began churning rather loudly against Sony's favor. Some overly imaginative analysts (as well as hopeful fanboys), declared possible bankruptcy for Sony, or foresaw their departure from the game market completely. It was also in this time that everyone, from major publisher CEOs to Retailers began telling Sony that they needed to price-drop, which continued to clash deliciously with the fact that Sony was losing money on the PS3 as it was. The distant rumblings of a possible PS3 Slim had not emerged quite yet, and Sony didn't change it's fortune, so much as Nintendo lost theirs.
5. Nintendo, June 2009 to October 2009
It started with E3 2009, though rumblings of it began ahead of time, when they were outsold by the PS3 for a number of weeks in Japan, but E3 2009, where the competition unveiled their motion control schemes, coupled with a continuing year-over-year decline for the device, led many to think that the time of Wii was at an end. After all, the competition now has what makes Wii great, and we've all known that they're superior to Wii in every other way, so now there's no reason to buy one, or so the media likes to say. This is coupled with the recent price-drops by both competitors, so that they're now in striking distance of the Wii's sales, and consumers will begin to see that there is so much more value that can be attained for only $50 more.
6. Microsoft, November 2009 to August 2010
A particularly weak holiday lineup for 2009 (with the weight mostly borne by an expansion pack of all things) and faced with PS3 off of its most famous price-drop and Nintendo with the twin behemoths of Wii Sports Resort and New Super Mario Bros Wii, Microsoft seemed to be the company lagging, no exclusives, no incentive, no hope. The announcement of Kinect and the Slim at the time did little to reinstill faith in the 360's lifespan properties, and it wasn't until those things really hit the market that Microsoft was able to abate the shadow of doom
7. Nintendo: September 2010 to Generation's End.
Though showing their abilities to soldier on through holiday seasons as they king, Nintendo again seemed to be doing nothing while Sony and Microsoft pulled out all the stops. Donkey Kong was left to stand against the last Bungie-made Halo, the eclipsing power of Black Ops (which given its sales on the one platform, might as well not even have been on the Wii), and the long-awaited Gran Turismo 5, the future began looking bleak for Nintendo around this time with a harder post-holiday drop and no conceivable hope for a lift in the Wii, the steadily falling DS to be replaced by the 3DS with its supposedly lacklustre start (I don't believe it had a lacklustre start, i'm just putting out what i see as the perception), and now the Wii has been declared dead and Nintendo's right back to the position of "there's no possible way they can win the next generation" that they were. The circle is now complete
None of this is meant to be offensive to any console owners, of course, it's just a reflection of what attitudes the media was projecting.
Now modernized
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
