Is Sony the most successful home console maker in history?

Yes. Sony is the way.

What you're basically saying is that Nintendo takes the prize for being the oldest in the industry. That statement is as much redundant as it is irrelevant to the context of this thread.

You already answered your own question OP.

Yes, they are the most successful console maker in history. The only commercial flops they've made are PSP Go and Vita and those were handhelds. Their home consoles have been extremely successful. Even the PS3 which I personally consider to be a commercial flop still sold over 80 million units, that's remarkable.

More irrelevant data. The only reason why company net value or capitalization became a thing is because fanboys, namely Xbots, couldn't even boast about the quality of their console or their exclusives anymore. So definitions ended up regressing from 'better games' to 'better console' to 'better company'. Which company is better? The richer one, which is Microsoft. That alone is a testament that Microsoft does not have the best console or games. Because if they did, fanboys wouldn't need to bring up this investor data.

Yes, Sony is great at making consoles, games and creating lems butthurt. What more could you ask? Thanks Sony.

I would have to disagree and say Nintendo. It depends mainly on how you define success. Nintendo has had continued success and a healthy company. Sony has had success with Playstation but not a healthy company.

@jhcho2: I brought it up and I'm not a MS fanboy. If anything my favorite console of the 5 I own is made by Nintendo. The data is relevant to me. I'm a business man. If winning isn't about being the biggest and the baddest then it's all just opinions. If I own a company and you own a company and you sell a few more widgets than me but I'm worth several hundred billion dollars more than you...well then you can think you won whatever you want. Pat yourself on the back there fella.

What's worse though is that we don't own companies, We own the widgets. And for some reason, us widget owners think WE won something because the widget we chose sold more than the other other guys. Just curious to me that's all. No one who bought a PS4 won anything. And if it makes one better than the person who chose the XBONE then I'm a MF God because I have all 3.

PS1 sold over 105 million (a few million more than the original Wii)

PS2 sold over 155 million.

I'd define "success" by profit, not number of units shipped/sold. Success would require a manufacturer to make money on their investment, not just get people to buy it.

With the way Sony hemorrhaged money on the PS3, it's hard to believe they could ever compare to Nintendo profits-wise. The only piece of hardware Nintendo ever made that wasn't profitable to begin with was the Wii U.

Yes and currently they are leading gen 8 by quite a lot.

Depends how you measure success. In terms of sales, Sony.

But success can mean different things. For example, accomplishments. And Nintendo has had some pretty amazing accomplishments in their time that Sony hasn't matched. For example, reviving the video game industry in the 80's, popularising handheld gaming and touch interfaces for games, huge phenomenons such as the Wii and Pokemon, getting people of all ages to play video games, and I'm sure there are a few other big examples.

There's also other ways of measuring success which you might be interested in, such as how much profit is made. Remember, Nintendo usually sells at a profit, whereas Sony sometimes hasn't.

@jhcho2: You will not get any argument from me. I think that goes without saying .

Sony is the clear console market leader. Even their worst console the ps3 matches the x360 a mega hit for MS. We all know this under no shit sherlock.

How pathetic bring that irrelevant shit when the topic is who has a more successful money farm,reality is MS is not $90 billions because of the shitty xbox brand but because they monopolize the PC market for decades most of what the brand has leave MS is losses.

And yes there are many people who gives 3 fu** about Mario,Zelda and Smash Bros,not every one likes mario no matter how much more popular it is than any sony franchise,the argument here is if sony is the most successful console maker,yes it is.

The Nes predates the Gameboy by years that is a sad excuse,the DS was super successful while the Wii also was,there is no need to focus resources,the wii U bombed and by the DS standard so did the 3DS which sold like 60 million less units in the same time frame than the DS.

How did i knew that you will be here riding Nintendos portables..hahahahaahaa

NO sony went almost bankrupt because ALL their business were failing,the PS3 could have being a success and sony would still have financial problems,which is why they sold several of their branches but not the gaming one.

4 consoles and still beat NIntendo's 6 ones and you can even add Sega to and probably MS.

As far as home consoles go (not including handhelds), the PlayStation is the world champion of home console sales.

Clearly not, or the majority would buy Nintendo, they don't.

Transformers is a masterpiece and McDonalds make the best burgers in the world.

And the Toyota Corolla is the best car in the world.

@kvally:

I hate all toyotas

Nintendo have still sold more consoles no matter how you put it

@uninspiredcup: Sales is at least an objective measure of the majority preferring one product over the other. Nintendo games being better is subjective.

@tormentos: My comments were pretty obvious. I stated that I didn't understand how one could get on their knees for one console or another. I like them all. You seem to be an expert so maybe you can explain it to me.

And this is a conversation. You may have noticed that many times the conversation doesn't exactly follow the views of the OP. You know...kind of like an actual conversation? Furthermore, it doesn't sound like much of an argument. It sounds like the definition of success according to you and the OP is decided on units shipped. As you stated, Sony is the winner. Yay!

I'm not on here whining about your horrible grammar and incredibly erroneous spelling, so how about doing me a solid and not come on here complaining when I bring up money? It may not be relevant to you, but there are shareholders that define success by it.

Financially SONY has not been a success in the console market, although the PS4 has pulled through.

They are pros are moving a ton of consoles overseas though, the Playstation brand is unmatched in Japan.

The sales and money argument again.

Try rating success on good gaming experience.

Hard to argue there too against Sony since Sony usually nails the most GOTY and other awards.

@drummerdave9099: lol what? The PS2 is debatebly the best console of all time.

Subjective awards for overrated games don't change the overall gaming experience of a system.

You have to identify the distinction between abstract philosophy versus the context of the thread. While everything you said is true, and you're entitled to have an inclination towards the net value of the company like a typical business man or investor, you're clearly in the wrong thread...or forum for that matter. There are plenty of forums out there for you to debate business prospects if you're interested.

What you're essentially doing is akin to bringing up net value of Apple and Samsung when the thread is about whether the Galaxy S7 or iPhone 7 is better. Presenting factually correct data while being out of context in relation to the thread does not give you the high ground in an argument.

@jhcho2: What you wrote in here needs to be a pamphlet for many posters in this subforum. Maybe it could be stickied.

Is there a debate here?

Had Nintendo not dropped the ball on the wanna-be Ultra 64 and the GC (one could have failed in terms of sales, but not both) then i think given their history and pedigree we could say them. But sadly they really screwed up in the late 90s and failed to adjust.

If Sony has not been a success in the console market, you think they'll make 4 iterations of Playstation consoles? They are not Microsoft, and do not have spare cash to burn.

Sony has been financially successful in the console market. Sony as a company, in terms of their overall balance sheet, and across all their divisions, has not. There is a big difference there

Good gaming experience is way too subjective. And not to mention that fanboys are practically incapable of having good experiences on rival hardware....and subsequently only have good experiences on their preferred hardware.

It's not an argument, nor am I seeking higher ground. Contrarily, I actually stated on this thread that Sony is the "winner." I'm just conversing. To your point though, the thread is entitled, "Is Sony the most successful console maker in history?" Not knowing what success is defined as, one might stumble across this definition; "the attainment of popularity or profit." Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are all console makers, are they not? Sony is the least profitable of the 3, yes? Just being clear that I'm in the wrong thread here. Had the OP specified that "success" was determined by something other than the conventional meaning OR that only profits that come directly from consoles that are not portable can be included in the discussion, I wouldn't have brought up anything I did. The OP then goes on to break your rules by not only not answering the question, but to go on to speak about Nintendo all the while never defining what "success" means.

I'm not on the wrong board. I'm a gamer. I like video games, and I like discussing them. Seems like a relevant enough place to do that. That also makes me a consumer in a $30M+ industry though. I'm not naive to that just because you love your PS4. Hell, I love mine too. And you're right...my statements are akin to the Apple/Samsung conversation. Had the thread been titled "Is Samsung the most successful phone maker in history, I suspect I would be listing some kind of figures (financial or otherwise,) from Apple, Samsung, and Blackberry."

Just out of curiosity. Consider my abstract way of thinking here...what else could the OP possibly have meant by "successful?" Clearly you don't think it was meant to refer to consoles sold, vis-a-vis commerce. That wouldn't belong in this thread...to "businessy." So what in the world did the OP mean? Oh wait a minute...the OP actually did ask the question, then list a bunch of numbers regarding consoles sold. Sorry, just confused here. So can I only bring up numbers when they support your view? I'm genuinely asking.

oh right...i mean the gameboys made more money than the SNES....so they started splitting their resources every gen.

yea wii and DS were both succesful at the same time...its hard to hit a homerun in both platforms every gen.if they concentrated on just oneplatform like sony....nintendo consoles would have been just as good as nes and snes...maybe even shit on sony......

but nintendo saw a market they could totally dominate in and they honestly favored handhelds over consoles. that gameboy/GBA money must have been real good.

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yea 100million ps1 and 150million ps2 is hard to beat but sony was also a cd and dvd player maker and that i think is what made it sell more than an nes or snes. because people saw it as double the value.

now that streaming is becoming the norm sony ditched the ultrahd player...that hurt their sales on the pro.

Top 3 for me (in order) are Gamecube, SNES, PS3. What I take most into account are 1. Library of games, and 2. How those games aged and rank among games today.

PS2 is pretty good don't get me wrong. But most of its best games are on PS3, with much better framerates and presentation. You can play the Devil May Cry, God of War, Final Fantasy X, GTA San Andreas, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, Jak and Daxter, Kingdom Hearts, Metal Gear, Okami, and Ratchet and Clank PS2 games all on PS3. Plus Uncharted, Last of Us, Souls, etc.

So what does that leave on PS2 that you can't experience on PS3? Star Wars Battlefront 2 comes to mind, as does GTA 3 and Vice City. Other than that not a whole lot.

Clearly I'm not saying PS2 is terrible, all those games wouldn't exist on PS3 if not for PS2, they're just better on PS3, making it the better console.

Sure. The PS3 bleeding money aside; their brand is legit as ****. Their console speaks to a larger core audience than their competitors.

I'd agree with Chaz though. Sonys games are mediocre as ****. I'll take creatively boring Nintendo over them any day of the week.

Yes Sony is the best ever. Best consoles and best games. Really easy.

Things like revenue, profit, market penetration and software sales are better indicators of success than mere hardware unit sales. And in that regard, Nintendo comes out ahead of Sony. Even in the PS2 era, Sony's most successful era, Nintendo was more profitable than Sony.

The best indication of success is hardware sales and overall game library. If Nintendo games are so good why does noone buy their consoles?

Fair enough, except if we're comparing Sony's games against Nintendo's games. Sony's selling plenty of hardware, yet their flag ship game this year (Uncharted 4) might be at 5 million+ in sales on a console that moved 40 million copies. Nintendo on the failure that is the WiiU can sell 8 million copies of Mario Kart, 5 million copies of 2 different Mario games, close to 5 million copies of Smash Bros, and like 4.5 million copies of Splatoon. The last one is a new ip mind you, I don't see Bloodborne (which for the record, I like more) or The Last Guardian putting up those numbers.

As much as Nintendo's hardware is irrelevant, their software still tends to do strong. And when they actually can release a device capable of getting a large install base (The 3DS) they sell ridiculous number of copies for Pokemon, Mario 3D Land, shit a remaster job of Ocarina of Time did 4.5 on the 3DS. Which again didn't do as hot as the Wii or the DS by comparison. Let's not get this twisted Nintendo's games themselves aren't necessarily the problem. They might not be the box movers (not in the same way that Grand Theft Auto is today), but of the 3 first parties Nintendo's games have a rabid enough audience that keeps coming back. Their biggest problem is that Nintendo foolishly keeps making devices that can only rely on being different and Nintendo, and without some fad worthy thing to catapult the device it's a lost cause for them in the hardware space.

Nintendo's games are fine, it's the hardware that's becoming the irrelevant aspect of Nintendo.

@jg4xchamp: Sony sells millions of third party games on their consoles. Can anyone compare with GTAs success and popularity for example? Software sales on a console are not only about first party. The whole library counts.

In past generations, console makers usually sold the hardare at a loss and relied on software sales to make up for it. This made software sales more important than hardware sales.

Ultimately, what matters most for console makers is profitability. In that sense, PS3 was a failure, since it hurt Sony financially.

Well that's about as right as it can be.

On pure numbers, sure.

But Nintendo is far more important to the history of the industry, and develops better games, on average.

I didn't say anything about third party. But Chaz's comments were Nintendo's games versus Sony's own games, I don't think he's stupid enough to argue against a larger far more diverse library versus one publisher. And Sony doesn't deserve any credit for GTA, or what numbers CoD or The Witcher 3 put up. The stuff Naughty Dog's games and Santa Monica's games do? That's on them.

Which is where I agreed with his sentiment that I'd much rather play Nintendo's games over the stuff Sony produces, otherwise I primarily game on PC. It goes without saying a lion's share of my play time is played on games that aren't made by Nintendo.

You are right about the fact that 'success' is essentially a subjective matter. Success in terms of a console maker, can be referring to commercial (ie. financial) success, consumer reception of the consoles, and perhaps even the reception of games for their console. All these are contextually valid arguments which give rise to subjectivity of the word 'success'.

Now, just because there are subjective definitions of the word 'success', all of which are contextually valid, it doesn't open the gates for non-contextually valid arguments like company net value to be presented in the argument. I'll tell you why comparing company net value is totally out of context.

All 3 of those companies (ie. MS, Sony & Nintendo) have different businesses and different business segments. Microsoft is primarily a software maker. Hardware is a secondary business. Sony is a consumer electronics maker, and is also in the movie making industry. Nintendo is purely a gaming software and hardware maker. Perhaps 80% or more of Microsoft's wealth and financial success comes from their Windows OSes. Their Xbox division deemed as a sinkhole amongst their major investors. Sony on the other hand...is losing money across the board, even their movie studios. Their Playstation consoles on the other hand...are making money, but because Sony doesn't have a Playstation division, and only a Consumer Electronics Division, and Playstation is under that division, so that entire division is actually in net negative because their TVs, phones, mp3 players etc. etc. are losing more money than the Playstation is generating. Nintendo on the other hand, is purely in the gaming industry. So technically, Nintendo is the only company which....when evaluated as a whole, is a proper reflection of how their consoles are doing, but not Microsoft and Sony. But all this is business talk.

If you really wanna compare financial net value as a representation of console success, you can. But you should technically splice out the segment of Microsoft and Sony's business which are responsible for the Xbox and Playstation respectively, and put out the figures of how much they spent versus revenue (ie. profit), and therefore we can see whether Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo is getting the highest yield for their investments. When you start looking at MS and Sony as a whole, the point of argument gets obfuscated by a bunch of other factors which are not related to this thread, and hence becomes out of context.

If we're comparing the financial situations of the gaming sectors of the three companies, it would look like this:

1. Nintendo

2. Sony

3. Microsoft

Nintendo is a gaming-only company, yet its market value rivals Sony as a whole. Much of Sony's income nowadays comes from Playstation, as its other divisions aren't doing so well. As for Microsoft, it has the highest value as a company, but only a tiny fraction of the company's income is from Xbox.

I don't argue with you on the segmented roles of business as being a necessary part of an argument, should there have been one. Save for the comment about Nintendo as a whole being a reflection of how their consoles are doing. Closer to accurate than the other two, but they still create software, merchandising, licensing, etc. Anyhow, I totally agree with you on the deeper evaluation, and had I thought anyone on this board would be interested in going into that much detail on the business side of things, I would have been happy to discuss. You seem to be one of the few qualified to, and you don't think it's appropriate to so...

You seem to be totally against deviating from some idea of what you think this board should be limited to, yet you've gone back and forth with me on one of those said subjects despite my repeating that we aren't arguing. Seems just like a great conversation between people which is what my idea of a message board/forum is. Not sure there's anywhere else to go with this since you limit yourself to what can be talked about here. Appreciate the repartee.

Clearly you haven't read the thread. Per @jhcho2 we are not allowed to talk about any of this on this website.