Just took a look at the total sales figures as we near the end of the life cycle for the Xbox360 / Ps3 / Wii on vgchartz.

http://www.vgchartz.com/

I thought it was crazy to see on a global scale that the Xbox brand is still the smallest compared to the total units sold for Nintendo or sony.

(Except for in the US where the Xbox360 is number 2 after total Wii's sold)

It's because people don't feel like they have to support something from their own country. Especially something as poorly put together as the 360 was.

vgchartz is unreliable as fuck though

I'm from Europe and love my 360 and was put together much better then the original ps3 which actually burned holes in my Ikea furniture! :-)

Microsoft only has advantage in the US and the UK compared to Sony but thats it. Europe and Japan are totally Sony countries if you compare these two.

Look at it from this stand point, being 2nd or 3rd isn't bad in a industry that's kinda big and has alot dollars tossed about from a rapbit fan base...... Microsoft is in the phone biz not to dominate or overthrow the iFruit and Drone smart phones but to serve as an alt to the crowd who doesn't like eithier and wants an options...

Sony is a hurt company if you read between the lines, the TV and other electronic that was there milk & honey has dried up and they aren't at the top like they once where, you can even say the entertainment part of the biz isn't bring in the money there are use too because all the different sources people can get their fix from...... presales are fun to look at but don't show what happens post release, will sony's tiny little box overheat and catch fire, will the 1st party be worth the wait, who knows nintendo might come out with the Wii U.0 which is code name revolution and with be the machine they first talked about before it became the wii that was suppose to be able to play all nintendo games from original NES to Now....

to be fair Microsoft actually still has not made money out of the Xbox brand. They are still like 4 billion $ in minus overall. That is why investors do not like the brand at all and want MS to abandon it. Microsoft has a ton of money but they do not make it with their console and entertainment brand..

You should study a few maps.

360 has way more software sales compared to both though, which is why its considered the most successful this gen. I do think its arguable since MS had to deal with paying for the rrod and came out a full year earlier, but try telling that to the bomb squad and they'll laugh and say "naw, 360 won". A fine example of how closed minded they can be

Yeah that could be very true, I don't know the numbers but that wasn't the goal of the first Xbox when it was launched, they wanted to get into livingroom gaming world and winning it was consider a bonus. Software is pretty much their main thing but to put out a gaming system and break even is still an bulletpoint on your company page and a win... MechWarrior, FlightSims, WordProcessors, and OSs will only go soo far into a company's future... you could say that Sony buying a movie company from a soda company wasn't a wise choice but it worked out for them.. Amazon's kindel mp3 books sounded nuts too.. Apple making a "walkman" rivail instead of educational computers most likely didn't sound like a great idea at the time too.... A web search company making a smartphone, tablet and netbook FTW..... and even if its not a grand slam win decimating the other team its still a good for the industry to have....

Yeah I was going to mention that it seems like 360 gets more 3rd party sales, so even if the hardware sales are close, they are probably making more money because the profit margin for software sales is probably bigger than that of hardware sales.

@darji: There US sales aren't bad at all and are much better then the original Xbox. http://www.vgchartz.com USA sales

At this point I think Sony and Microsoft are really quite equal heading into the next gen, everything has been reset and the past doesn't matter which one will win in the future.... If it did the Wii U would be selling at this point. If anything I would say Niintendo is the Underdog at this point.

I think that this generation was so close that you can't pick out any real " winner". The Wii sold the most, but catered to a more casual audience and lost steam once the novelity of motion controls wore off. The 360 had a head start, pioneered in online gaming and was big in the us, but not so huge in the rest of the world. PS3 joined late and fumbled hard with 599$ and an architecture that is very hard to handle for developers. Somehow it still got huge in europe and asia and slowly passed 360 global with a steady stream of great exclusives.

In some form all won in some regard and lost in others. Looking at where they were coming from, 360 gained the most from og xbox and ps3 lost the most from ps2. But thats mostly due to the incredible domination of the ps2. Wii hit a lucky surprise jackpot and somehow stopped competing afterwards.

However the current momentum goes in favour of PS3 (PS+, tlou, ...), mostly because 360 stopped releasing big exclusive titles too early and somehow forgot about indies. I feel like 360 (and now xone) is making the same error as nintendo did earlier with the wii. They got a respectable success with the kinect (not as huge as the wii, but big) and kind of thought that the novelity will never wear off and they can continue milking the casual market. Now that average joe had enough of jumping around in his living room, they are left in this weird spot. So in a way I think it was beneficial for the PS3 that the move did not do so well, so they continued focusing on actual games.

I know that Uk is in Europe. But the lead in the UK makes not up for the rest of Europe in which the PS3 is really dominating and even with a huge lead in the US the 360 still managed to fall to the 3rd place world wide even with a 1 year head start.

Yes the 360 can be called a success but they still need to make money with their brand. And now with the Xbox One they finally realized their vision they had back when they started. It is now all or nothing with this system. Now we will see if all the billions of dollars they invested in 2 consoles will pay of for them or not. This device was/is their future vision.

Your original 360, the one that doesn't even have WiFi build-in? 360 failure rate is 24% vs 10% of the PS3.

I heard the PS3 quasi-lateral-joy-inhibition is 200% higher than on the 360, just check my sources at www.facts.com

the failure rate of the 360 was over 60% for the first version. Normally it even should be 100% during a known design flaw. It was basically great luck if you still have your first console.

That was still 2009: So I think you get the drift.

http://www.destructoid.com/xbox-360-failure-rate-in-uk-60-says-cnet-155457.phtml

I'm closing this on the basis that the entire argument is based on information from vgchartz...also, this isn't System Wars. Come on, guys.