I am trying to find the stealth troll in your thread but it must be well hidden.

My thoughts on this is simply that Nintendo concentrated on gaming whilst the other two put their resources into hardware muscle and an entertainment system.

This nonsense of Sony and MS trying to take over the living room as an "all in one entertainment" hub was flawed from the outset and Nintendo called that correctly.

1) Most people don't care for HDTV gaming (although I think they were a bit off with their prediction regarding the public switch to HD TV)

2) Entertainment addons on a gaming console would be dead in the near future so it was pointless investing $millions into it for no reward.

3) Keeep It Simple Stupid.

This is something I hadn't thought of. It makes sense that its a losing prosition for Microsoft to sell Xbox 360 Arcades to people who just use it as a media extender and Sony to sell people a fancy Blu Ray player. It also explains why so much of the added online functionality of the Xbox 360 is attached to the Live subscription and why they are unlikely to add many if any new services which are not attached to an obvious revenue stream. It also doesn't make sense for Sony to sell people an underpriced computer either and I wonder if this is the reason why the idea of a PS-computer hasn't gone very far. 

The original PS may not have been sold at a loss, but it couldn't have been sold for much of a profit if they made as little as they did on hardware + royalties. Even $1 per game should have netted them more than they made.

I liked Riddick yes, it was one of my favorite FPS games of the year.

And Mario sells yes but NSMB Wii will sell more than Galaxy easily, and it has a lot to do with the gameplay and style and further proves the point that beautiful graphics (SMG) and "advanced" gameplay (a big gravity element) doesn't make the better game for the most people, but there is a good market for both games but you can't release the advanced graphical monsters every week cause they won't sell as much and usually hurt your business (though SMG doesn't have that issue but its a general statement about the industry)

And yeah I'm rather pissed about the lack of new IPs or new ideas which is why I really enjoy the Wii since its the console with the most new IPs and innovative gameplay risks (yes there are stinkers there but its not like everyone knew how to make a working adventure game in 3D at first either it took Zeldas targeting system to give people ideas) but I'm hoping with things like LBP, mod nation racers, Natal, and Wand that maybe, just maybe people are getting the hint and will try some new things even on the HD consoles.

You know what the Wii does well?

I’ll tell you, its friends with the TV.

Do you know what the TV does well?

It convinces people to buy!

Why do I say this?

The other day my mom told me she wanted a Wii !
Cool :D I get a Wii and don’t have to pay for it :P

But wait ! I asked her why, and she replied she saw it on TV and it looked fun, its a family console.
YAY for advertisements.

Well, I guess the OP is a reason why this gen might be stretching even longer than usual. It probably takes so many years for HD development to be cheap and for Sony and MS to slash redundant bits on their consoles.

As for the graphics, I doubt it would go any further than 1080p. After all, since when have they started to have "recommended viewing distances" on TV sets.

Part of the reason I like the Wii so much is because of all the different ideas on the system. The lower dev costs allow for more experimentation, and titles can be released that otherwise would've never been considered for creation . Of course that comes with loads of shovelware, but there is a great variety of software.

For being the family friendly console, it has some of the most violent games too lol

i'm pretty sure the master system came with viewing distance recommendations, but i could be remembering wrong.

@Squill: Pretty much so. But since Live is additional feature, it doesn't fit the razor and blades model as "blades". In the model, "blades" are the actual product sold and "razor" is just the way to have the customer to buy the "blades".

Sonys relatively bad profit margins were because of huge costs associated elsewhere, PS2 development and massive ad campains did hit their profits among other stuff.

I don't even think the razor blade companies take a loss on the handles. Nintendo is more like the razor blade model because they made a profit on the handles, but make a larger profit on the software/blades.

What MS and Sony are doing is the dot.bomb model. They are taking huge losses with the hopes of making the money back later.

@Grimes: The name actually comes from Gillette, since it was the Gillette founder who "invented" the model. And it's still used (atleast a decade ago was) by giving away razors for free to teenage boys.