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Who Won The Last Generation


DANGERMAN
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From a business point of view, it's probably Nintendo. The Wii sold ridiculously well in the beginning (and was hard to get hold of for a large part of it's first year?). There's an argument to me made that it burned out rather fast though, there didn't seem to be a lot happening for the last couple of years before the Wii U. They bought a lot of new people into gaming, its debatable how many stuck around once they got tired of Wii bowling. Not many if Wii U sales are any indication.

Game wise: decent 3rd party software dropped off quickly. Very few publishers other than Nintendo seemed able to be successful on it.

Compared to the PS2, Sony had a massive drop off with a lot of early missteps, but they've turned things around. I don't think you can argue they 'won' the generation given the dominant position they started from, but they now seem in a great position for the new generation.

Microsoft had a fantastic gen compared to where they were with the O.G. Xbox. The 360 was (IMO) genuinely the best console for the first 2-3 years. Unfortunately the generation has been a lot longer than that, and they've alienated a lot of fans of the 360 in those last couple of years.

But that's all academic, the winner is PC.

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Probably the 360 in terms of gaming, setting precidents, cultural relativity, although thats contested strongly by the early years for the Wii.

Business wise then probably the Wii as they were making crazy profit and it really made a big impact at launch and soon after, but it was hardly in it by the end of the generation for all its bravado out of the blocks, so that tips things in the favour of the 360.

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good points about the wii, winning over people who don't play games, massive sales hit. i really like the wii, but looking back i can't remember loads of great exclusives compared to my personal pick - the 360 wins for me because of the exclusives being some of my favorite games ever - Halo, PGR, Trials, and all the amazing 2D shooters.

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They all sort of broke even. /groan

Like people have said the Wii in terms of sales really rocked the house. The 360 had a fantastic start and actually made the customer feel valued for a while. Whereas Sony did the complete opposite with the PS3 but in the end the sales of the Wii didn't matter much because there wasn't a regular supply of great games. The exclusives for the 360 either slowed down or weren't as meaningful as they pushed for timed exclusive rights to DLC, while the dashboard continued to collapse under its own weight. And the PS3 continued to get amazing exclusives and clawed back some of those lost sales from the start.

Overall I played the 360 the most and it was my multiplatform console of choice thanks to achievements for a while, then when I lost interest in them the controller and generally lower price would ensure the 360 was nearly always picked. That and my PS3 was one of those 20 gig, no rumble ones (which I bought just before the better version for the same price was announced) that deleted all of my save data and I never really forgave it. Though my current slim sees a lot more playtime.

Really, they were all just sort of there after a the four year mark. The fanboyism died down in most civilised places after a while and it was all about the games then which I think I will remember more than which console won.

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I agree with what's been said. The Wii sold the most but more games were probably sold on the other platforms. The PS3 didn't start well and the 360 was a more attractive proposal with a solid library of games to start with but that went all to shit after a while and then the PS3 got its shit together a bit more. It's a tough one to call really.

Previous gens seem to be easier to call. PS2 clearly 'won'. The Dreamcast didn't click with enough people to stay around, the GmaeCube kept its head above water thanks to its exclusives and you had the Xbox bringing online gaming to consoles and doing it properly which appealed to a bunch of folk. But due to timing, being a DVD player, a massive library and having the cool PlayStation brand on it it became a big success.

The PlayStation won the previous gen, too,

As for the previous one to that I don't really know. Pretty much everyone I knew had a Mega Drive so it seemed like that maybe did but I just don't know. I feel like the SNES was maybe bigger outside of Europe... not that no-one had one here, but I feel like we were more about the Mega Drive.

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Won in terms of what though?

in terms of pleasing the fan base?

in terms of pushing gmaing forward

in terms of quality of hardware?

In my opinion the 360 started strong, but over time eroded into a bloated, slow, advert delivery box

PS3 started out well delivering a lot of fan service but then fell over somewhat, but ended up strong with PS+

Nintendo kinda played their own game, did something new with the wii, but then didn't really do much new by way of games.

PS3's had a fairly robust build quality and when they went wrong were relatively easy to fix yourself, Xbox built quality was somewhat ropey (that's a gentle under statement). Nintendo consoles seem to be the most resilient and I don't seem to recall having heard of anyone having had a Wii fail on them (perhaps this is because they rarely get played)

In terms of games? yeah Sony had some good exclusives, so did MS, Nintendo are still selling Nintendo games, which makes everyone very happy. but ultimately aren't all the console exclusives just variants of each other? If you're going down the path of "which console did one game look better on?" then that seems like an argument with an ultimately pointless outcome. In terms of support for developers, MS started out doing as much as they could to help indie developers, but have now buried the indie marketplace. Sony seems to have not really bothered much with indie stuff at all. Nintendo has sold Nintendo games, which made everyone happy.

What about things like onlive, which was a fucking smart idea, but reaching a little too far over what current technology can deliver? or the Atari Flashback?

Can you compare halo reach, to Mario galaxy to uncharted?

Sounds exactly the like sort of pretentious bullshit click-bait article that crops up from time to time from "video game journalists" trying to make a name for themselves by being contrary...

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For me the Wii was the winner, because it's Nintendo and because of Mario Galaxy.

Also the 360 was the winner because I played the most games on here and all my favourite multi-platform games were bought on it. Purely because of the controller.

The penultimate winner was the PS3, because I am still playing it and because of the obscure titles it attracted.

The final winner was me - and still is.

From previous generations.

For me its the GC, I had a ridiculous number of games for it. Super Monkey Ball ruled my life. No brainer before, N64... Wave Race and Mario 64. I played PS1's a lot but they just didn't attract me.

Before that I was Sega all the way!

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the generation before is a really tough one to call for me, all 4 were amazing, dc, gc, ps2, and xbox. trying to look at it objectively probably the ps2 had most good games, great variety, and 4 cave shmups. but i loved the nintendo/sega stuff on the gc/dc, and the xbox had pgr and halo. do i have to pick one? aaaaaarrrggghhh PS2 god damn it.

before that, ps/n64/saturn - n64 wins for me but this is more a time when i couldn't give a good judgement because i was young and only had one console and a few games so, i had a snes and n64 so they won, but i never had a megadrive so can't compare really in that generation. i had a ps1 and saturn, but only later on, picking up a few games that i liked for each, and they were both good.

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I know a couple of people haven't posted yet, and I might be about to sound wankerish, but this thread has sort of got the answers I expected but not for the reasons I expected, if that makes sense?

The standard response to who won the generation has traditionally been whoever sold the most, so last gen the Wii. For whatever reason the internet seems to struggle with that concept, and this thread was inspired by a thread on Gaf called 'Why do people keep saying that "Wii won last gen?"

Hendo posting that the Wii won in terms of most sold but the 360 with gamers (although I'd argue only with US and UK gamers) is the kind of answer I was expecting, but I don't think H is saying it to get out of saying the Wii, he likes the Wii.

It's why I asked about previous generations, to see if it was more clear cut (PS2, PS1, snes), but instead everyone's talking about what was their favourite and why, which is nice but not quite what I was expecting :lol: I think it shows that this place is probably alright, but also starved of conversation topics

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I would say Wii for the last generation, it did sell crazy loads but i felt like it died off after a while, like people who did own them barely touched them anymore. I'd have to say the 360.

Generation before has to be PS2 easily.

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Tough one to answer really. 360 pretty much re-invented online gaming with Live Arcade, and Party Chat, and had countless must-play games. Halo, Gears, Crackdown, Geometry Wars, etc. etc.

PS3 had a shaky start ("it costs shitloads, so work harder to buy one, you peasants"). But again, had a stellar pile of exclusives you'd be clinically insane to miss. Uncharted, God Of War 3, Last Of Us and so on. Then came PS Plus, and a ridiculous ammount of top quality games for free. Beat that.

Wii of course went down the "renovation" route, doing things we'd have thought would never work. And for all it's third party shovelware, there was some bloody amazing games. Mario Galaxy. Paper Mario, No More Heroes, Mad World...

If I had to choose a winner, I'd say 360. Because it was my first real experience of online gaming, and through it I made some great friends to share many hours of pissing about with (hello Sly and Craymen :-) )

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Tough call, the wii at the start of the generation was the clear winner through sales of the console, zelda and the other big nintendo franchises. The 360 had the battle won about halfway the reinvention of online play xbox was the way forward, halo and gears, forza all made it a great console but MS messed up with advertising and gold being required for sky/lovefilm etc.. but the ps3 was the dark horse towards the end of the generation some awesome releases, last of us, uncharted and numerous gamers went back to ps3 and then the back catalogue and ps plus made the ps3 the must have at the end.

Really tough call to see who won.

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Hendo posting that the Wii won in terms of most sold but the 360 with gamers (although I'd argue only with US and UK gamers) is the kind of answer I was expecting, but I don't think H is saying it to get out of saying the Wii, he likes the Wii.

My reasoning (which I didn't want to go into depth mostly because I was posting from my phone) is that you go on any multiformat forum of that time, including this one, GTM, NL, Neogaf, rllmuk, etc and ask which version of a game people will buy that's out for all 3 machines and a very clear majority would answer with 360.

It didn't help matters that for a fair few games the PS3 versions were noticably worse (Bethesda, take a bow). Also the 360's online infrastructure was better, people went where their friends were, achievements, etc. And a Wii version of the same game would at least graphically be the worst one or have whole features cut out.

I have had great times with all 3 machines but none of them cloud my judgement that the 360 was definitely the machine to go for. The Wii, as much as it sold and as great as some of its games were, couldn't keep that momentum it had from it's very first game. Shit tons of people bought it to play Wii Sports and didn't want anything else for it. So yeah it probably sold the most but I think the 360 had the true popular vote despite of it exploding if you dared breathe on it the wrong way.

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