What are Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft's biggest mistakes in the last ten years?

In your opinion, what are the biggest missteps made by the the three companies in the last ten years?

My list:

SONY

• PlayStation 3 launch
• PlayStation Vita and how it has been handled
• Failing to capitalize on the third party support for the PSP

NINTENDO

• Their failure to capitalize on the Wii's success and to sustain it for their next console
• The Wii U
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword 

MICROSOFT

• The Xbox One messaging and PR problems
• Games for Windows Live
• Microsoft's failure to invest in new first party IPs

11 years of dominance was finished at that infamous E3 conference. PS3 looked Dreamcasted for a while, got owned by the GBA and lost a million billion dollars.

Wii U. The Wii was selling 22 (yes, twenty two) times as many units as the Wii U at the same point in its life. Lol.

XBone pissed away 12 years of good progress and will get annihilated worldwide. Their goal of usurping Sony to be no. 1 has probably been long given up on. (Disclaimer- it'll still do fine.)

Nintendo - everything

M$ - Kinect, Xbone, RROD, lack of exclusives outside Halo and Gears

Sony - $599 and the cell

Nintendo = Not doing something productive with the money they got from the Wii

Sony = Not making the PS2.... 2

M$ = Letting people know they're the owners of the xbox.

Sony: PS3 Architecture by far. It's the reason MS was able to gain momentum with the consumer and third parties. It's a pivitol point in video gaming history, a point where the all powerful PS brand lost it's power. If the PS3 had a simpler design that allowed for easy development and allowed them launch sooner, the Xbox brand would never have gotten off it's feet without an incredible struggle.

MS: Xbox One DRM and messaging issues and launch price. It's not easy to get the consoles direction. It seems once the console launchs MS are going to have to show people that way.

Nintendo: When it comes to home consoles, I just don't know where to begin. They're like the bad guy in a kids TV show that keeps losing and then at the end says "i'll get my revenge if it's the last thing I do mwahahaha". And they keep doing it over and over again.

Microsoft: Xbox One

Sony: The Playstation 3- insane $600 launch price, ridiculous architecture, failing to forsee social and online gaming aspects as a major feature.

Microsoft: Xbox One PR messaging, not having exclusives the last few years of 360's lifecycle

Nintendo: Ughhhh...where to start. Making the Wii a non-Hd console. The Wii U (unnecessary). Not caring about console hardware power (if they did they would obliterate the competition). The Wii U tablet controller. Failure to make a mature, upgraded Zelda game.

Nintendo takes the crown for bonehead decisions by far. If they just released a console that was even close to the power of X1 or PS4, there would be no contest, they would dominate the world.

Nintendo - everything

M$ - Kinect, Xbone, RROD, lack of exclusives outside Halo and Gears

Sony - $599 and the cell

NathanDrakeSwag

Sony: Price of PS3 at launch
Price and lack of games for the VITA
The last one you stated for Sony- "Failing to capitalize on the third party support for the PSP."

Nintendo: Pricing for Wii U
Pricing for Nintendo 3DS

Microsoft: Not including more things in GOLD to make it worth buying. Also making it where you have to buy gold in order for you to use apps such as Youtube which is already a FREE SERVICE and Netflix. Netflix is something that you already have to pay for.
Took a long time for them to have WiFi included in their consoles. Buying the wireless adapter add on that costed $100 was bull.
Using batteries for remotes.
Having to buy a remote charger separate from the in order for you to charge it, at least in the beginning anyways. Not sure if they still do that with the newer 360s.
Raised XBOX LIVE GOLD price. 

Nintendo- Gimmicky controls & weak CPUs & GPUs. 

MS- Overly controlling, charging, & making everything an extra cost to upgrade.

Sony- Waiting a year later to release PS3 after the 360, designing the PS3 with a special architecture that cost them too much & made them over charge for the PS3 for years. 

All 3 companies- Motion controls are lame. 

Nintendo

• They don't seem to listen to 3rd party developers at all when designing their systems.
• The 3DS didn't sell at $250 because people were confused why a "new iteration of the DS" (I know it's a new system, and not an upgrade) cost over twice as much as the old version. Nintendo then goes along with calling their next console the Wii U, and suffers the exact same fate in the home console space.
• Not listening to their fans, and their wants. It should never require a petition to get Nintendo games released in America...

Sony

• The PSN outage. They brought that upon themselves by treating their fans poorly at the time.
• Not charging for online which cost them hundreds of millions of dollars every year. 
• Making the PS Vita the way it is after making the PSP. It's as if they learned nothing.

Microsoft

• RROD caused people to not trust the Xbox 360 early on, and instead those customers purchased other consoles instead
• They don't put enough emphasis on gaining marketshare in markets outside the US
• They sold back their share of Bungie
• Not clearly explaining their intentions with the Xbox One (which I believe were all well, and good).

Nintendo

Pushing series like Star Fox and F Zero to the side leading the way to casual games.

The 2DS announcement

The Wii U

Sony

The PS3 Launch Price

The Vita

The new layout of the Playstation Store

Microsoft

Rare ruining Banjo Kazooie

Red Ring of Death

The Xbox

In your opinion, what are the biggest missteps made by the the three companies in the last ten years?

My list:

SONY

• PlayStation 3 launch
• PlayStation Vita and how it has been handled
• Failing to capitalize on the third party support for the PSP

NINTENDO

• Their failure to capitalize on the Wii's success and to sustain it for their next console
• The Wii U
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

MICROSOFT

• The Xbox One messaging and PR problems
• Games for Windows Live
• Microsoft's failure to invest in new first party IPs

charizard1605

SONY

• PS1 - Faulty hardware. CD's not reading do to laser issues. Poor customer support
• PS2 - DRE. No Ethernet Port when launched. Over promise on hardware at E3.
• PS3 - Overpriced - $599. Terrible launch games. More lies from Sony about hardware at E3.
• B/C & Linux Support removed. PSN hacked down for a month. Stolen customer info. No AAAE games for 18 months.
• YLOD on many PS3s. Still poor customer service. MOVE hardware. Abandoning MOVE hardware. Poor online service.
• PS4 - Having to pay to play online with the PS4. Weak exclusive launch lineup.

NINTENDO

• Wii - 3rd Party multiplat games different and not as good as competitions. Games catered to casual gamers only.
• Various changes to Wii remote. Nintendo abandoned console with over 120 million owners.
• Wii U - Overpriced Wii 1.5. Way to little storage. Hardware specs no where near competitions. Lack of great launch titles during and after launch.
• Terrible communication to public when marketing Wii U. Terrible E3, Gamescom, Pax and TGS events. Nintendo not listening to their fanbase.
• Gamepad another gimmick that didn't impress gamers. Terrible online services.

MICROSOFT

• Xbox - Oversized controller. Poor marketing for other regions. Lots of no name exclusives. Oversized system. Was terminates way to soon.
• XBox 360 - Overheating hardware caused RROD. Stopped producing quality exclusive games after 4 years. Increased price of XBL service.
• No new IPs. Didn't captialize on RARE LTD or Lionhead Studios talent. Let Bungie, Ensemble Studios & Access Software go without utilizing all their talents
• for XBox 360 and XBox One games.
• Xbox One - Poor marketing and communication when introducing the XBox One console for the first time. Terrible policies that had to be reversed. Priced
• higher then it's competition at $500. Marketed as an All-In-One entertainment box first instead of game console. Included Kinect SKU only instead of
• another SKU without Kinect. Promoted advertising and "always on" for Kinect. Arrogant Execs telling gamers to "Deal With It" or "Buy an XBox 360 instead".

These are just some of the issues we had over the last 10 years with current and past game consoles.

Sony:

PS3 mistakes:

• PS3 launch price
• PS3 "cell" processor - contributed to the expensive initial price and made the system very hard to program for
• Removing PS3 backwards compatibility with PS2 games.  it was possible to emulate the PS2 without the hardware support, as proved by the MGS4 special edition, so they could have reduced cost AND kept backwards compatibility
• Removing "other OS" support from PS3
• PSN outsge. Not directly their fault for launching thwe attack, but it was their poor security standards and pitiful response that allowed it to take place caused the biggest problems getting things working again

PSP mistakes:

• PSP slim's extremely poor video output implementation (extreme letterboxing on EVERY display, improper proportions, inability to output games in 480i)
• PSP Go
• Not implementing backwards compatibility into the PS Vita (for anything that wasn't bought through PSN).  They could have made a UMD drive accessory or something...
• Lack of support for PS Vita in both software and marketing
• 3G Vita.  Let's face it, it's useless to release a second, more expensive SKU that requires you to source and subscribe to a second data plan or an expensive "data sharing" plan with your wireless carrier when you could instead just enable a WiFi hotspot on your phone and connect your Vita to it

Nintendo:

Wii mistakes:

• Using old last-gen-at-the-time tech to power the Wii
• Not supporting HD resolutions on the Wii (likely due to its outdated tech)
• The name Wii (though I've since been desensitized to it, I used to think it was it was stupid.)
• AA battery powered controller in an age of Li-Ion batteries being standard
• Shifting to a casual focus in the middle of the Wii era and sending their traditional fanbase adrift
• Lack of analog control on the original DS (and its same-generation spinoffs)
• Only supporting WEP encryption on the original DS/DS Lite (when WPA was already becomming pretty much standard)

GBA/DS/3DS mistakes:

• The Nintendo WiFi Connection.  Worst online service ever. It was link playing against bots, except the bots were controlled elsewhere by humans that you had no means of interacting with.
• Not releasing Mother 3 in North America (I still hate you, Reggie!)
• The poor placement of the 3DS' D-pad (should be swapped with the circle pad)
• Lack of a built-in second circle pad on ALL 3DS models
• The 2DS (I'm speculating...)

Wii U mistakes:

• Not learning from their Wii mistakes and using old will-be-last-gen-in-a-few-months hardware to power the Wii U
• Trying to copy the tablet fat and making an expensive tablet controller that killed the system's price point (the reason why its predecessor sold well) for very little gain
• Lack of first party support for Wii U
• Lack of proper marketing for Wii U
• No effort to entice third party developers (the outdated tech/tablet are likely contributing to their lackluster support)

Microsoft:

Xbox 360 mistakes:

• Xbox Live Gold paywall for EVERYTHING
• patch fees for developers
• New Xbox Experience, spotlight ads, avatars, etc
• AA battery powered controller in an age of Li-Ion batteries being standard
• charging for an expensive rechargabe controller battery that should be standard
• No built-in WiFi, charging $100 for a proprietary USB WiFi adapter

Xbox One:

• Everything to do with the reveal/announcements... too long to write

Windows/PC mistakes:

• Games for Windows Live.
• Not bringing most of their first-party games to PC, or if they do, trying to use them to force OS upgrades (ie Halo 2)
• Windows 8 UI (underlying OS is good, UI was poorly implemented for non-touch devices)
• Windows Server 2012 using Windows 8 UI (Makes NO sense to have a damn tablet interface on a corporate server!!!)

In your opinion, what are the biggest missteps made by the the three companies in the last ten years?

My list:

SONY

• PlayStation 3 launch
• PlayStation Vita and how it has been handled
• Failing to capitalize on the third party support for the PSP

NINTENDO

• Their failure to capitalize on the Wii's success and to sustain it for their next console
• The Wii U
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword 

MICROSOFT

• The Xbox One messaging and PR problems
• Games for Windows Live
• Microsoft's failure to invest in new first party IPs

 

charizard1605

Nintendo:

• Mishandling software during the wii era.  Minimal resources going to the most popular games like Wiisports and NSMBWii.  Too much resources going to Skyward Sword, the Mario Galaxy games, Other M, and other "hardcore" titles.  Xenoblade was totally mishandled, particularly for NA.  I thought for sure that they were holding out for a HD version on the wiiu but apparently there was just no plan at all there.  Reggie should have been fired over that.

Microsoft:

• RROD.  They had the gen in their hands and let it slip away.

Sony: 

• Everything about the ps3 launch.  Price, games, media quotes, everything.

Nintendo

Pushing series like Star Fox and F Zero to the side leading the way to casual games.

chocolate1325

In your opinion, what are the biggest missteps made by the the three companies in the last ten years?

My list:

SONY

• PlayStation 3 launch
• PlayStation Vita and how it has been handled
• Failing to capitalize on the third party support for the PSP

NINTENDO

• Their failure to capitalize on the Wii's success and to sustain it for their next console
• The Wii U
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword 

MICROSOFT

• The Xbox One messaging and PR problems
• Games for Windows Live
• Microsoft's failure to invest in new first party IPs

 

charizard1605

Aren't these reasons kind of the same?

I don't think you guys should be faulting MS for their lack of 1st party support. MS's strategy is to secure third party content exclusives and that strategy is totally working for them.GunSmith1_basic