well ok you must have short term memory if you dont think SONIC changed anything. Sonic made a MAJOR impact when it was first released and Genesis sales SKY ROCKETED afterwards, not to mention that the sonic games WERE KILLER APPS for Genesis.
And Nintendo didnt win the SNES era, they and Sega pretty much tied, unless you count neo geo and turbo Graphx they were on sale those same years and they both pretty much flopped.
GTA adn FF have pretty much lost hier luster as far as gamers are concernd and proably wont matter much next gen at all. Same think happened to Sonic, his games deteriorated in quality adn his fanbase started to shrink so I think Sonic is going to have to make major changes before people will notice it again.
Mario is iffy, way back when Super Mario Bros was THE game to get a NES for, then when SNES came out it had to compete with SMB3 for attention, I distinctly remeber holding off on getting a SNES BECAUSE we just got SMB3 and it offered very similar mechanics to SMW. I remeber playing SMW at my frinds ouse and wanting a SNES but SMB3 was more than enough to distract me for a long time, and by teh time my parents were willing to invest ina enw systems Sonic came out and won us over so we skipped SNEs for Genesis, and I was a BIG TIME Nintendo fan at that time so to jump ship for Sonic was a big deal but sinced SMB3 satisfied me for Mario and Sonic overshadoed SMW at the time I was pretty well off. It wasnt untill after N64 came out that I had found enough games on SNES that WERENT on Genesis to get me to buy the system.
When Saturn and PS came out I skipped both cuz N64 just looked better and i had too much invested in Genesis to replace it with Saturn and my SNES was a bargain purchase so N64 wasa no brainer for me. but that chanegd a year latter when FF7 came along, seing how much I enjoyed FF3 so much and how cool the commercial was I just HAD to have that game so I abadnoned my 64 for PS. I did keep my 64 and eventualy got more games for it than PS since FF7 and 8 were basicaly the only games I liked on it.
BUt Game Cubne has been so different. I originaly was expecting it to sell because of the franchises, all my friends owned N64s for Smash Bros and Zelda so i natrualy expected them to get GCs for teh same games, liek I did, but when the time came they were split, most went with PS2 becauuse of DVD and games like GTA3 and Ratchet and Clank. It wasnt until after having them over playing Mario Party 4 and SSBM one nite did I convicne them to give GC a chance, but by then it was too late they all told me they were sick of playing the same old crap and wanted something new, and thast what PS2 offerd.
Now for the REv it is looking like theres a REALLY BIG chance Nintendo can pull it off since they are goiong for something new and original plus they are offering old favorites that many people will want to revisit.
I am willing to wager money that the REV will not only fair better this coming Gen but I actualy expect it to totaly blow the others away, and I honestly do realisticaly think that theres a chance eitehr SOny or MS will fold as a result. BUT it all ways has and always will depend on the GAMES. Nintendo didnt do so well tios gen because of the games but next Gen if they fix some mistakes they should be ok. I also knwo a lot more people who are interested in the rev right now way more than PS3 just because they are growing tired of the same old stuff and ps3 is just more of the same.