You may have missed the most recent tiff between Microsoft and Sony. It was relatively low-key as far as these corporate slap-fights go. To quickly summarize the silliness, Sony came out and said that Microsoft and Nintendo’s consoles aren’t as cool as the PS3 because the PS3 comes with everything you need out of the box. Microsoft took offense to this and told Sony to shove it, not everyone needs Wi-Fi and having a variety of SKUs makes them cooler than Sony could ever hope to be.

The Wii has continued to shatter sales and industry expectations throughout it’s two year lifespan by selling over 41 million units, easily becoming the sales leader in the current generation console wars. Even with the year advantage held by the Xbox 360, the sales of the Wii have been a juggernaut during both the holiday seasons, as well as the traditional low sales periods of the year such as the spring and summer. While the Wii has brought a breathe of new life into an industry that had an arguably stagnant consumer base previous to it’s launch, it is important to look at the other profound effects that the Wii has had on the industry, predominantly the hardware sales of the previous console leader, Sony.