The Wii had unprecedented sales in the first three years of its life and it looked like it would run away with this console generation. However, with the Wii’s flagging sales and the endurance of the Xbox 360 in the U.S. market, DFC Intelligence thinks that Xbox 360 will win the marathon race between consoles of this generation.

“Amazingly Microsoft didn’t have to do much exaggerating as in its seventh full year on the market the Xbox 360 had a stellar performance,” said DFC. “For its generation, the Xbox 360, not the Wii, will end up as the number one selling console system in the U.S.”

DFC is estimating that by 2017, the Xbox 360 will have sold over 46 million units in the U.S. while they put the Wii at about 42 million and the PS3 at just over 33.5 million. They note that while Microsoft has really excelled in the waning years of this generation, Nintendo has seen sharp declines and the Wii U hasn’t picked up the slack.

“Shockingly it was in the later years of its life that the Xbox 360 really took off,” DFC noted. “The success of Microsoft and the Xbox 360 during the past two years highlights a radical changing of the guard in the game industry. Much has been made about a steady video game sales decline in the past three years.”

“In reality the decline has mainly been due to the aging console systems and more importantly because of Nintendo’s collapse. Unlike Microsoft, Nintendo has been in a major downward cycle, much of it self-inflicted. Nintendo’s spin for the Wii U focused on how it made more revenue than the Wii at launch. Of course, the Wii was supply constrained at launch and sold at a lower price so that is not surprising. The reality is that many Wii U systems were sitting unsold on shelves at year end. Consumers love games more than ever but a new order of game providers is resulting in market shifts that are proving painful for Nintendo and other established game companies,” concluded DFC.

Source: GamesIndustry International