Indeed that was my whole issue with Sony's E3 the only surprises they had were minimized due to it.

I think the PS3 Slim and the new marketing was the best business moves this year, even though they are far from first place sales wise. If you game and a movie buff, the PS3 is an awesome machine.

Wii suffers from an odd man out problem when it comes to the latest and glitziest games and their marketing campaigns, Wii is absent from that scene. Apart from that, I'm pretty sure Wii owners are very happy with their own exclusives list of games. Aside from Wii and all the complaints people have of it (myself included), Nintendo won both the console and the handheld market by an unbeatable margin.

Piracy for Wii games in my country is amazingly high, there are a lot of shops here that sell modded Japanese and Korean consoles, with nothing but pirated DVDs of Wii games. Some of the deals are - buy a console get 10 games free. There is a market here, obviously not big relatively speaking, but Ninty is losing out on software sales for themselves and 3rd parties here and I assume, in a lot of smaller countries not officially included in their defined regions.

For 360, they should just bundle the damn WiFi adapter and scrap the Arcade, who buys Arcade anyways, without a hard disk when a lot of games require it? I'm just full of qq when it comes to MS ... tsk sigh ... Oh yeah, they provide the best developer support of all 3 consoles, this is what the other guys really should learn from MS. Oh and they are super aggressive and competitive, which pushes everyone to do better, if not for XBL, would there even be a PSN with Sony losing so much already? ... well that wasn't so bad :] ...

Edit: ok duh, I gravitated to overall review and not 2009 sowee (>o<")

Microsoft:

Great YEar

Were up YOY for a lot of it

Things looked great for them

They had good games this fall

But then "it" came on September 1st

Nintendo:

Let me start by saying, the DS has once again topped & ruled the world & it deserves to. the amount of quality games consistently coming out on that thing is astounding.

The Wii has been the OPPOSITE of the DS for me games wise. In terms of sales they have be strong but are down YOY by around 3 Million or so.....which is no small figure

Something somewhere went wrong

In Japan it is being challenged for its YTD sales for 2009, something which seemed a stark impossibility a year ago.

SONY:

The beginning of the year was bad. PS3 had articles against it. it was seen as a failure.

I remember an article Yahoo made about discontnuing PS3 & so on.

SONY were constantly bashed for their 13 Million PS3 forecast

Things were bad

Then it came on September 1st, it broke all expectations & continues to do so. It completely changed PS3's image.

The PS3 Slim is one of the biggest success stories of this generation.

Uncharted 2 came after that and has sold well, but most importantly the quality of the title ranks as one of the best.

With the 13th Fantasy EPIC set to hit Japan in a mere 10 days, expect big things from PS3!

____________

Special Note:

Modern Warfare 2 deserves to get a special mention, look at its sales for proof!

All three have done well, but Im most pleased for Sony. They've been through hell, about time something good happened. They certainly deserved that slap in the face however, their arrogance at the beginning of this gen was ridiculous.

Nintendo has the year wrapped in terms of sales, both hardware and software. The 360 has held up well, and the slim gave the PS3 a remarkable boost. But the Wii and DS continue to dominate, and the PSP hardly feels worth mentioning.

The PS3 has done wonderfully in terms of games though, and even though I don't own a 360 or a Wii, I can safely say that the PS3 has had the best lineup for me this year.

Microsoft had the biggest reveal with Natal though, and I am looking forward to seeing what will be done with it, and the Wands as well.

Nintendo dissapointed me in the beggining-C

I love my 360. I literally love it. I even cook it breakfast afterwards. But I have to tip my hat to the PS3 in 2010. It just had more games that I wanted to play. Even the games I didn't want to play (Killzone 2) were undeniably good. Microsoft just phoned in 2009, it seems. And Nintendo only had a handful of games that I wanted (Overkill, Punch-out!!, NSMB Wii).

As a gamer:
1. PS3
2. Wii
3. 360

From a business perspective:
1.Nintendo
2.Microsoft (making money and I STILL buy more games on this console than any other)
3. Sony (Slim is selling strongly, though)

I'd say Microsoft has definitely lost more ground this year than either of the other two. They did conquer E3, making it the second year in a row for them. It always seems like Microsoft has a natural advantage going into E3, they always seem to be able to put on the better show (strictly in terms of presentation, regardless of software), it just depends on whether or not they have the substance to back it, but when it comes to the situation on the ground, Microsoft really lost control of things this year.

Microsoft's year was basically great up through September, and from October on they've dropped the ball in sales, hype, and exclusive releases, which is really hurting them since this is the exact point at which Sony is bringing their A game.

Sony pretty much had the opposite problem, in that they were flagging badly in the West (though their recovery started early this year in Japan) until September, and now they've flipped positions with Microsoft for the time being. They gave a good run at trying to revive the PSP, which seems to be slightly working (Go isn't doing well, but PSP 3000 sales seem to be benefitting), they pulled out the stops at the end of the year, and it seems to be benefitting them, to the tune of probably beating the Wii overall in sales in Japan, and evening out the gap with Microsoft

This year was when Nintendo was actually punished for last holiday season, i think. Their momentum deflated, earlier in Japan and later in the West, though they're still solidly ahead, and are slowly bringing back the software. It was another huge year for DS, but i think this year was especially validating for Wii, because this was the year that the competition acknowledged that Wii is the proper market leader.

Somy did good, but MS is #1

Microsoft seems to really want to win E3 every year now. I mean I remember early in the year, all the threads saying the 360 had no games, and it's pretty clear that was intentional, as they like announcing just about everything at E3. I do think that they decided to let the 3rd parties carry the system this year, I mean, all they really did were a couple of Halo games and Forza 3 (not that those weren't good). On the other hand, look at all the big games for the 360 next year, and you'll see that only two of them aren't going to be published by Microsoft.

Overall, it's been a pretty good year for the 360, and at E3 it seemed to me pretty clear that they "get" who their audience is and what kind of games they like (minus Natal of course). So yeah, I'm glad I have a great lineup next year to look forward to.