I bought a Xbox 360 first because all my friends had one and also because most of the ''next gen'' JRPG where for this system at the time.

They also made a console that didn't have a 52% failure rate.

I once owned all 3 current gen consoles. After several months, my 360 failed on me and I wasn't using my wii anymore. I got rid of both and now I use my PS3 exclusively and I've never looked back.

For as much as Sony stumbled at the start, to their credit, Microsoft did equally as much to garner the favor of its consumers.

If you lose, don't lose the lesson

-Dave Chappelle

Its hard to argue with his logic when it is so... logical.

If sony didn't release the PS3 at $500-$600 day one and made it like 300, xbox wouldn't have this big lead. The same happen with nintendo not using cds for the N64.

@lemon-fresh
funnily enough my cat and dog do live quite happily together - and as a kid our family dog lactated for our kitten! you could have got that on esther ransom!
. mario galaxy and donkey kong and skyward sword. as far as exclusives go the wii has them for me...not many but it has the best (IMHO), PS3? uncharted 2 and that is it (again IMHO) xbox...er...crackdown? PC? it fairs better. - just finally managed to get tie fighter workin! :)

At Anti-jimmyx...

That's not a Dave Chappelle quote. That was Dave Chappelle quoting the Dalai Lama. Bonus points for referencing one of the funniest skits of all time, tho.

"Baby...last night...at that Das FX concert...I riggety realized...I liggety love you."

Now THAT is a Dave Chappelle quote. XD

While I was just using a Wii beginning of this generation I already came to the conclusion that the ps3 was actually cheaper, if you assume you are going to use the device till the end of the generation the upgradebility of the harddrive, and the fact that xbox life usually 5 years per generation would have added a 250€ to the price and combined with the failure rate known from the start I expected another console I would need to buy in the generation at around 300€ so in truth the ps3 was cheaper from the start, the difference in costs would only be notable after a few years. Still I am now again back to my old gaming home the pc so I don't have to worry about console wars anymore.

@Pennywise

Oh God, I remember the countless arguments over which console was superior in terms of power and EVERYONE argued that the PS2 was the best despite it being the weakest. Those were the days.

I am mainly a PC gamer so this is not an Anti-Sony fangirl rant. I have had my 360 die three times and Microsoft replaced it twice. I bought the third one later on when the slim was released. Sony still never owned up to the "disc read error" PS2 fuck up. I know no one who did not own multiple PS2s due to the errors and Sony just told them to fuck off. That is why I waited a long time to buy my PS3, which I have had to repair 3 times on my own dime due to the YLOD. So yes, Microsoft made shit hardware but Sony Hubris has constantly bit me in the wallet and my PS3 is now a paperweight (Dead again). My PC will always be my first love but if Uncharted and Killzone don't take a step back from becoming movies, I will have no reason to own another Sony system.

He's totally right about that. It's actually nice to see someone acknowledge that one of the reasons they've done so well is because their competition made alot of mistakes. Honestly when I look at it the PS3 is largely inferior to the 360, but I still choose the PS3 over the 360 because it has a handful of exclusives I like, I'm a fanboy who has bought every other Playstation device, and I prefer the PS3 controller to the 360 controller.

He's absolutely right. They needed to find a way to hit that $400 price point at launch regardless of how much money it would have cost them in the short term. They shouldn't have spent all that time and money developing the Cell Processor, as powerful as it was, when all it did was make the first couple years of PS3 ports from 360 look like absolute shit because developer didn't have the time, money, or ability to properly code for it. They should have paid attention to the success of Xbox Live and Steam, launched in 2002 and 2003 respectively, and gotten a fully featured online infrastructure out there at launch. They should have paid a little more attention to software development to avoid the lackluster XMB for the first couple years and the terrible system updates it's always had.

The "no games" thing was and always will be bullshit. The only reason that was never leveled against the 360 was because everyone was just playing Halo 2 at that point, and once Oblivion came out that was a huge time sink. The 360 launch was pretty average-mediocre. COD2 was solid, PDZ was fucking terrible, and PGR3, Most Wanted, and Burnout Revenge were a nice trifecta, but only if you actually liked racing games. Nothing else was really worth buying at that point.

So yea. If Sony could of at least half addressed those problems, they could have crushed the 360 in light of the massive hardware failures (literally every one of the dozens of people I know with a pre Jasper 360 has had it fail on them multiple times, myself included) and high cost of Xbox Live. They didn't. And now we're here.

I remember sony saying that microsoft and sony will walk into a tent and only sony will walk out alive. Xbox robbed sony of marketshare and this is what matters most to ms.

Sony has done more things right than Microsoft since their initial mistakes...at least for gamers. With taking chances on new IPs, and trying to deliver a solid line up at retail. Their paid service actually gives you some premium perks like beta invites, games etc. First impressions just mean a lot I think. Also...I wouldn't be surprised if Msoft's console failures put them ahead in sales that much more. I know I've bought 2 boxes this gen, and my friend has bought 2 or 3. I personally prefer the non-cluttered XMB, and don't care about online much anymore so PS3 is my console of choice, but I still enjoy the 360.

@HEL105
True that the PS3 and 360 really aren't different from each other. Only differences now is that of course PSN is free to play online and that PS3 keeps pumping out quality exclusives that most find enjoyable while 360 just hasn't anymore exclusives as it has lost all its exclusives to PC and PS3.

So honestly I feel there is no real reason to own 360 unless you REALLY wanted to play Halo or Gears, its only exclusives left and all. Every other game, Dead Rising 2, Alan Wake and all that, can be played on PS3 and/or PC.

But because Sony has been doing poor marketing and Microsoft really knows how to rub the mass market, of course 360 is still doing successful and has people thinking that 360 is far superior than PS3 when honestly they are pretty much the same quality and have the same games, aside from devs making poor ports to the PS3 though that has lessened since then, and what I said about PS3 having more exclusives.

Anyway yeah as I admitted, Sony has been making bad moves in marketing and they are putting too much effort and money into anti-piracy measures which makes their product only cost more than it should only for pirates to break through anyway. Bah. As Jim Sterling has already said, trying to fight piracy only makes it stronger.

The 360 did succeed because Sony wasn't smart.

At the same time, the 360 didn't completely dominate because Microsoft wasn't smart.

This last generation was a comedy of errors from all three console makers, each seemingly determined to shoot itself in the foot more often than its competition. The "winner" and "loser" was as much a matter of blind luck as anything.

This just in: A Runner trips and some else wins the race, More on this at 11.

Thanks for the obvious Bach.

Will say though, only reason I have a 360 at all is because I couldn't afford a PS3 till the price drops, and then it felt like it was too late for me to really justify a PS3 purchase because the next generation is around the bend and I'm still 20 games deep in my backlog.

Good ol' microsoft duo.

"We only succeeded because our competitor was incompetent."

I've still not bought a PS3 because I think the controller is fucking horrible, the 360 one isn't so bad by comparison imo.

I are think one console is best!

I'm not heavily into MP in my games so the PS3 exclusives caught my eye more than the 360. That's not to say I actually bought either of them, since I went to PC instead. Now that PS3 has Steam though, I think I might get one before the year's out. How's that working out anyway? Do they have sales there too like on the PC?

I agree. PS2 was fuckin great. ps3 is garbage.

I agree. But I didn't get a 360 until the RRoD possibility had been all but eliminated.

Excellent! This is a helpful and interesting news article that has spurred thoughtful debate. Hooray for reader value!

Hmmmm. He's right of course. Still, PS3's not there yet; okay they seem to have a lot of exclusives, but none of them are killer apps - okay, that's dumb, Uncharted is a killer app. LBP is cool, too.

yet the ps3 is still going strong, and the other 2 systems are now at breaking points where they need to release a new system because their current tech is out of date.

The Game Overthinker called it last year.
http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2010/08/episode-39-emperor-has-no-clothes.html

...this may be a little off topic but ps3 had me sold @ region free...that iz worth and the so called mistakes sony has done...plus like someone mentioned before 95% of games are on ps3 and xbox360...let'z call this gen of gaming exactly what we all know it has been...an evil german whore houze...

This must be fetusmilk's first console generation. That's adorable!

This whole console gen has been full of problems.
If any one of the big 3 had done a better job managing this gen, they could have blown the other 2 away. But instead, all 3 had big screw ups that kept the race close.

The 360 could have destroyed everything if not for the rrod. That scared a lot of people off. The argument that many 360 sales came from rrod replacements is wack. There is no question the rrod hurt the 360 in its early years. If the 360 did not have that issue, the first year head start would have been huge. Instead, they largely wasted their year head start and had to kinect their way to the finish line.

Nintendo had this whole race sown up, and technically they still do in lifetime sales. But with so little 3rd party support and the casualization of their core games, they allowed the wii to be nothing more than a fad. In fact, they are right back where they started this gen, in the underdog role.

And Sony, ah yes, Sony. Sony SHOULD have dominated this gen. The ps was on a tear, the ps2 had the largest market share that we've seen since the NES era. And after 2 very successful consoles, they were in the driver's seat. Until they crashed the car. Quite simply, their own overconfidence is what killed them. Sony just assumed everyone would buy their over priced ps3. They assumed devs would make games for the most powerful console instead of the 360/wii. They assumed that shear power would win, even though the previous ps1 and ps2 were far from being the most powerful console of their time. If they had done any number of things differently, we would have seen them be #1 again.

So in the end, this console gen was a full of screwups and mismanagement. It frankly came down to who screwed up the least. All 3 makers now have something to prove going forward. Nintendo has to prove they can be hardcore again. Sony has to prove the ps4 is easy to make games for and not too expensive. And MS has to prove they can build a launch a console that is reliable from the start. It is anybody's game next generation.

I suspect things would have gone differently if Nintendo had given the Wii HD support. That made the biggest difference in graphics quality between the Wii and the competition.

While Nintendo had a strong start this generation, the lack of HD killed it's long term potential. I'm actually surprised at how well the Wii did for so long. Still, the difference in graphics quality pretty much pushed the traditional gaming crowd away despite a pretty solid showing of games aimed at them early on (what many douchely refer to as the "hardcore" crowd). But market support for those games waned right from the start as everyone scrambled onto the HD boat (and for good reason, it's a fantastic boat to be on!) and it just was not worth it to third parties to target traditional gamers on the Wii.

That ultimately killed third party support for the Wii more than anything else.

In hindsight, the sheer amount of success the system had would have been more than enough for Nintendo to sell at the launch price they went with and ride out any incurred cost of adding HD output.

ONLY reason why it succeeded in anyway at all.