Originally I wanted a PS3 and a Wii. I ended up getting the Wii but honestly I'm not happy with any of the consoles this generation. I
love my library of games for my Nintendo DS -- it's probably my single-richest library ever, even richer than my NES, SNES, or original GameBoy game libraries! -- but the NDS isn't the Wii, PS3, or XBox 360, now is it? ^^;
Opinions with NO CHARTS OR TABLES to back them up. I don't care. I'm speaking anecdotally here and am not trying to convince anybody to agree with me. I'm just expressing my views.
[hide]I think the PS3 was a commercial failure, a company failure, and a consumerbase failure.
* commercial failure: the machine isn't profitable. Then again, neither was the XBox. The last 8 to 9 years have been defined by the new-age idea of "sell the console at a loss, make your money back with the expensive games." And it's worked, for the most part. Still doesn't change the fact that, as a machine, the PS3 is a nightmare for entrepreneurs.
* company failure: Sony really dropped the ball in lots of ways.
- They lied when they claimed to not care what Microsoft or Nintendo did. Sony very quickly adopted Nintendo's motion-sensing controller idea after E3 2006 (or was it E3 2007? I forget already), and even from the very beginning they were already engaged in the then-fledgling war with Microsoft over high-definition optical disc formats -- HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray. So no, Sony very much did care. But they said over and over that they didn't, and then proved to us that they did. And that hurt their corporate image. :\
- In little under two years (2007 thru 2008/9), Sony demolished the lead they had spent 8 years building with PS2 sales. They lost major investor confidence with this one.
- Sony made Nintendo's GameCube mistake of having only two types of games: Sony franchises for the die-hard fans and then lame attempts at new IPs. All the fuss Sony made over Little Big Planet reminds me in a lot of ways of the fuss made over Spore (PC) and Pikmin (Nintendo GameCube). "It's gonna be awesome! It's gonna change the way you look at gaming! It's gonna--!" Go on sale this weekend at Best Buy for $30. So much for that. :\
- CREEPY COMMERCIALS AT LAUNCH!!!! @_@ Remember the one with the baby doll that cries blood or paint or something? Fucked up, man. Just plain fuckin' weird.
* consumerbase failure because so many people now doubt Sony's position in the console wars. Where before it was a known fact that PS2 was king, XBox was an envious Queen, and GameCube was the court jester, now we're in a Bizarro World where half the people say 360's on top, half the people say Wii's on top, and tons of people say the PS3 has got 2nd place but NO ONE says it's in 1st except for the occasional fanboy in denial. What the hell happened? You used to be laughed out of a forum if you said XBox had more sales than PS2, and now it's the opposite for 360 and PS3? Kudos to Microsoft, but the 360 really isn't a great console. (As a consumer product, I think it's worse than the XBox. Less reliable, less glamorous, less "holy shit this is fucking awesome I love what Microsoft is bringing to the table yeah yeah yeah!!!".) The only reason the Wii and the 360 are beating the PS3's ass is because this console generation was a loser's festival and the PS3 just so happens to be the biggest loser of them all. It doesn't mean the other consoles are actually good. :\[/hide]
So having said all that ...
I would like to see what they come up with next gen. I bought a Wii but it gathers dust more often than not. I didn't buy a 360. I didn't buy a PS3. Why? Because I have a DS which is better than all of them, a PS2 (which I came to own very late -- 2008! -- and so I have lots of cool games to catch up on!), and there aren't really any killer apps for me on any of the main consoles. (DS has Pokemon, Phoenix Wright, Layton, I'm so fucking sold!! But Wii doesn't have a good 3D Pokemon game still. XBox doesn't have Shenmue III and neither does PS3. None of them has Fatal Frame IV [in America]. None of them has any must-have game of mine. :\)