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[rm082e]

Honest answer: It was a three way tie.

Nintendo sold more units, but set themselves up to go down the wrong path with the Wii U.

PlayStation stumbled hard, but eventually found their way. Xbox certainly pushed them to be better.

Xbox did a great job from '06 - '09...or at least we could say that if not for the RROD. But then Kinect happened. It was tragic to watch them abandon the audience who they had been pleasing so well in favor of arm-flailing nonsense.

I had all 3 and they even felt like a tie in my house. The Wii was fun for the family and it had some good exclusives that I'm glad I didn't miss out on. My 360 was great early on, and then it RROD'ed just in time for me to start focusing most of my energy on the PS3 when I became obsessed with Demon's Souls. PS3 was great once it got going with the exclusives, but then mine died with the YLOD and I had to buy that third model as a replacement which felt like a shitty knock-off. So I wound up equally excited by, and also bitterly disappointed with both 360 and PS3.

The overheating issues and dog shit performance late in the generation pushed me over to the PC where I would have control over both. I remember Dishonored was one of the first games I played on my GTX 680. Having the game run at native 1080/60 on my Panasonic plasma was pure bliss.

 

[Avid Reading Horse]

360 easy dub....

Wii's the Wii and it's great for being a Wii but it's just a Wii.

PS3 was embarrassing. It's like if the Xbox One showed up a year late.

 

[nush]

Opinion Trailer  Thread 'Are We in Peak PS360 Nostalgia?'

May 15, 2026

Look up reviews for Capcom's latest, Pragmata, and one comparison keeps coming up: it feels like an Xbox 360 game. But what does that actually mean, and are we really on the cusp of a seventh-generation revival?

• (00:01–01:49) The video argues that modern games like Capcom's Capcom Pragmata are being praised specifically because they "feel like Xbox 360 games." Reviewers compare it to classics such as Vanquish, Dead Space, Lost Planet, and Gears of War due to its frantic third-person combat, experimental mechanics, and linear cinematic...

• IbizaPocholo
• Replies: 59
• Forum: Gaming Discussion

• 
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• 

I guess we are on the way based on this topic.

 

[REDRZA MWS]

Xbox 360 was just the best console that gen. Loved my PS3, but the way many games played better in 360 , coupled with Xbox Live being ridiculous, for me its was 360.

 

[Pagusas]

Tale of 2 halves

1st half: Xbox >>>>>>>>>>>>>> PS3 by a large margin, The Xbox was king.
2nd Half: Wii ate everyone's lunch, but the PS3 found its stride and Xbox's brand collapse starts with the Kinect.

 

[StereoVsn]

Yet, all the worst things in console gaming were also introduced in PS360 era

having to pay money to play online
DLCs
timed exclusives
timed exclusives for DLCs

And remember that stupid MP charge on used games that some publishers pulled? EA in particular was all about that.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

For me it was the lack of Japanese games on consoles is the main reason why I'm not as into the 7th Generation as much as I am into the 5th/6th Generation. I did love Fables, Mass Effect Trilogy and a few other Western games but whatever Japanese game that was released on the consoles tended to be not as good and lot of the Japanese developers ended up developing for DS/PSP. Back than I wasn't a portable guy due to the screen size and resolution. It's actually amazing how much DS library reminds me of the PS2 library. Most of the games you still can't find anywhere else and there was a good variety of games in each genre. There were some bangers on consoles like Nino Kuni, Xenoblade Chronicles etc but it was noticiable less than the previous two generations

I don't think there was a lack of Japanese games on consoles that gen. It's just that Western devs finally became the leading development wing of the console industry whereas with every gen prior (going back to NES, at least), that role had been fulfilled by Japanese devs.

TONS of PC-exclusive or PC-centric devs shifted focused to console AAA that gen, which was mainly spearheaded by the growth of Xbox 360 in Western markets building off what OG Xbox already had started proliferating. Japanese devs had a lot of problems transitioning to HD game dev that gen and there may've been a drop of slight sorts in content as a result, but we also saw a massive load of them either continue supporting PS2, switch over the DS & PSP, or go over to the Wii to balance that out.

A good number still focused on what they had been doing 6th-gen for 7th-gen, just scaling up the resolution, but it's not their fault Western games press got overinflated egos and started pushing BS narratives against Japanese game design. Also ironic how that coincided with the early creep of hyper political ideology seeping into games journalism but I'm gonna leave it at that.

I don't.

You'll be changing your tune about Switch 2 by next year for certain.

Depends on the criteria for "winning".

Nintendo Wii had the most hardware sales. Xbox 360 was the only time the platform was firing on all cylinders and a significant contender. PlayStation 3 opened with a disastrous launch but had the best turnaround seen, transforming the console from a laughingstock to a powerhouse.

I would argue the real winner was the PS3. While its sales were less than Wii, the PS3 helped position the PS4 to become the complete dominator tbat it was, in one of the most important generations of gaming.

Xbox squandered the trust and good will it had built with the 360 on the XB1, while Nintendo cratered the market they had created and nurtured with Wii into a complete failure with the WiiU. It took them several years to recover with the Switch. Xbox never recovered from the XB1. The console's unveiling was a mortal wound to the brand and ever since it's been slowly bleeding out.

Yep, this is ultimately why I'd choose PS3 over 360 as well. 360's best years were 2006 - 2009. But post-Kinect the fall-off was real and gradually became more evident with each passing year.

Had PS3 not been on a trajectory of recovery it wouldn't have seemed so bad, but it was so that exacerbated the 360's issues to core gamers in particular. Sony set themselves up for long-term success while Microsoft eroded a massive chunk of their earlier goodwill, particularly once the Xbox One leaks started gaining traction and then the XBO's reveal.

Technically the momentum Xbox gained from 360 was unmatched but Microsoft fucked it all up with Xbox one .
For online play 360 was the console to get halos gears forzas all the cods were peak back than

In a way it was, but the vast majority of that momentum was concentrated in the US & UK. A lot of the Japanese 3P support they got was actually due to challenges inherited to HD game dev and those Japanese devs feeling they needed to spread costs to supporting other platforms to offset the budgets, particularly if they wanted to recoup with good sales in US & UK where 360 was dominating (PS3 much less so).

By context of 360 managing to somehow challenge PS3 with (really) only US & UK doing the heavy lifting in market presence is still very impressive in its own context. But it's something worth always keeping in mind.

 

[Kagoshima_Luke]

I hated the Wii because of the waggle stuff. Even Super Mario Galaxy suffered because of it. All that said, it won that generation hands down. Massive success for Nintendo.

 

[i_karan]

360 won the generation easily because all of the third party software was mostly bought on 360. Playstation may have gained some small amount of headway of consoles sold by the end of the console life cycle, but at that point, most of the software was mostly sold on x360.

 

[R6Rider]

Overall I think PS3 got the edge in the end (preference of exclusives, the controller, bluray, free online, the XMB), but between PS3 and 360 you couldn't go wrong.

As for the Wii, it had some great titles, but the forced motion controls in many games and the system being far less powerful/not HD was pretty lame.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

PS3

 

[reezoo]

Only Gaben bought a yatch, just saying…

 

[PauloRoberto]

PS3 and there should be no discussion. For the first (and only?) time we saw a company focusing on showing why a product was good, and that gaves us many GOOD first party titles and cemented Sony as a powrehouse of narrative driven games with great gameplay (and I absolutely understand and agree with anyone that arguments that Sony alone lost this edge).

MS was the biggest loser because it alone lost all the steam it was able to generate with X360, the game quality in general was lowering year by year and whoever thought that Kinect was the future of gaming was a idiot.

Wii in itself is a deceptive victory for Nintendo, because even today they don't know how to captivate WIi audience to their first party games (lord in heaven, Mario Galaxy sold 6 mi copies... for a potential 100 mi buyers!)

 

[Badlucktroll]

i went through 4 360s that generation because the goddamn thing would self destruct

 

[fersnake]

xbox i dont count wii cuz its a 6 gen console.

 

[poodaddy]

I personally go 360 for that generation, but PS3 is incredible too. Here's how you know that generation was fucking rad, both of these consoles and comically large libraries for both are still set up in my home right now in two different rooms for convenience, one in the guest room and the other in my bedroom. I also loved the wii, but its novelty kind of wore off on me and I rarely returned to it, so I didn't end up keeping that one.

What a generation man. I really didn't get to experience it much during that generation either, as I was an active duty soldier at the time and my MOS actually worked lol, so I didn't get to truly experience either of these until the PS4/XBone generation had already started, and yet I'm still this nostalgic for it; that's just how goddamn good those libraries are.

 

[vodka-bull]

That's a tough decision, but it's a very close PS3 > Wii > 360. Very close. PS3 is still connectd to the TV, it's still a fantastic media server and I have tons of games for it still in my backlog. Wii redefined gaming and it had some killer gamew, currently playing through Mario Galaxy (vi Steam Deck) again and this game for me is still the pinnacleof perfect gameplay. And on Xbox 360 I had some of the best moments of my youth nd it introduced online multiplayer to me.

But as I said, it's a very tight race. All of them were great and imho the 7th generation was the best we ever had, not despite, but because the competition was so tough to beat. No greedy Nintendo, no creatively bankrupt Microsoft and no cocky Sony. Today everything's changed for the worse…

 

[Guardian Monkey]

xbox360 - multiplayer
ps3 - singleplayer
wii -wtf

 

[Pallas]

Wii, if we are strictly talking about console sales which is the metric we tend to use the most in every generation to determine a "winner"

360 and 360, both had much better games but they could not do the numbers the Wii did. I consider it a draw.

 

[IAmRei]

won? sales wise, WII
I don't like most of it, but it's WII for all sides of gamers back then.

my favorite at the time, are NDS and PSP and PC
I never bought wii, because too gimmickly and the only games i want to play are Zelda, Last Story, and Xenoblade

 

[{insert code here}]

IMHO there was no clear winner.

Steam was in it's infancy but it was clear that it was going to own the entire space in the future.

Nintendo hit a jackpot with the Wii/DS combo and both were popular on a global scale.

Microsoft utterly dominated with the 360 until about 2010/2011 where they fumbled with the Kinect.

Sony had their cheeks thoroughly clapped with the PS3 until the OS, network services and software eventually caught up around 2009/2010 and they've basically owned the console space ever since.

 

[Kilau]

The Wii is home to some of the worst games in Nintendo's franchises. Worst Zelda, worst MK, formerly the worst Metroid Prime game, worst Smash Bros, Mario Galaxy is overrated by huge margin. It won the sales but for games it was dog shit. For me, PS3 edges out the 360 with it's strong finish.

 

[Ozzie666]

Obviously WII in sales numbers. But it's not that simple, Nintendo limped to the finish line for the last 2 years and lost all it had built. Microsoft lost their way. Sony was the only one who turned it around and carried that over to their next console. Sony was on the brink, selling buildings and assets just to stay alive. Incredible reversal. It has to be Sony. Pricing, bundles and top tier first party games. Masterclass.

 

[ThaGuy]

I enjoyed all three that Gen but I would say the mix of Xbox live with gears, halo and left4dead made that Gen for me. Especially since that was the time me and my friends moved to different cities or states so it was the best way to play online.

So for me it was Xbox for online multiplayer, PlayStation for single player and wii for the couch gaming and family functions.

 

[Hero_Select]

xbox i dont count wii cuz its a 6 gen console.

That's not how it works.

 

[pulicat]

In terms of finances, there's no doubt Wii won this without any trouble at all.

Nintendo profits during Wii era = +$22bn(profits)
Sony PlayStation profits during PS3 era = -$4bn(loss)
Xbox division profits during 360 era = -$3bn(loss)