The Nintendo Ltd. (OTC: NTDOY) Wii and Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation 3 were released within two weeks of each other, in November of 2006, as the latter two of the three "seventh generation" home video-game consoles, with the Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xbox 360, released a year earlier, being the third. Now, a year and a half later, let's review how the two gaming machines stand up to each other.

Out of the gate, the Wii was a hit. It broke sales records, led by its revolutionary controller and Wii Sports, a silly mini-game compilation that came packaged with the console. The focus of the system was more on its unique game play, which Nintendo hoped would draw casual gamers, than its intense graphics abilities. The gamble paid off, as the Wii surpassed the Xbox 360, which was released earlier, as the top-selling console in September 2007.

The PlayStation 3 had no such luck at the start. The console's strategy, like the Xbox 360's, revolved around graphics, which made the system more expensive -- $499 for the basic PS3 at launch was double the Wii's $249 launch price. Sony also decided to intertwine the fate of the console with that of the next generation DVD technology the company backed, the Blu-ray disc. However, the release of the PS3 slightly predated the high-definition craze, and so having a Blu-ray player was not an important enough selling point to help the console at launch. Another issue for the PS3 at launch was the lack of a cornerstone franchise for the system. Xbox had Halo, and Nintendo, with its deep video-game roots, had Zelda, Mario, and Metroid. Without a "must buy" game or franchise, Sony was left out, and its PlayStations stayed on the shelves.

PC World referred to the PlayStation 3 as one of the top tech screw-ups of 2006, for a number of the reasons mentioned above. However, time has caught up with the console and its potential is starting to be realized. Games that were delayed, such as the highly anticipated Heavenly Sword, have come out, and developers are warming to the consoles complex architecture. Additionally, the momentum of Blu-ray and the increase in sales of high-definition televisions have helped boost sales of the PS3 as a media device.

The Wii is not without critics, either. There are some that see the innovative Wii controller as a fad that is reaching saturation. If the Wii is a novelty based around its wand controller, it could fall by the wayside and give way to the higher-powered consoles like the PS3. Another concern for the Wii is third-party games. Weak third-party support from Nintendo, which likes to push its own titles, could alienate popular vendors from releasing best-selling titles on the Wii, which is already challenging to them due to the differences in control between Wii remote and the other two more traditional console controllers.

Despite all their differences and the fierce competition between them, the consoles are helping each other by pushing the bounds of what video games can do. Nintendo got the idea to make the Wii backwards compatible after seeing the success of backwards compatibility with three generations of PlayStation consoles. The PS3 stole the six-axis controller idea, in a much more limited capacity, from the Wii. And both the Wii and the PS3 stole the online integration idea from Xbox Live. In the end, like many things in a free market economy, the consumer is the ultimate beneficiary.