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This past year has seen one of the bloodiest fought battles in console history starting to take shape, with all three major players having consoles on the market, and good games starting to be released for all of them.

It can be said that the Xbox 360 had a relatively successful year, mainly due to Halo 3 finally seeing the light of day. That game alone meant thousands more consoles were sold, and stopped 2007 from being a disaster. Microsoft also took a leaf out of Nintendo’s book, and decided to become more family friendly, both in wallet and content terms, releasing the Xbox 360 Arcade pack.

At the same time 2007 wasn’t too bad for Sony’s Playstation3. Sony did take some brave decisions, eventually dropping the price of the console and bringing it in to the pay scale of ordinary people rather than just technophiles. The games are starting to come through on the PS3, and with pretty much all the big franchises scheduled to have updates (their first of this generation) next year, the future looks more rosy for sure.

But the year 2007 had definitely been the year of the Wii, with the underpowered but innovative little white Nintendo machine killing all comers on the way to the top of the sales chart.

According to reviews from genuine purchasers collated by independent review publishers, Reevoo, the Nintendo Wii was judged the most popular of the big three consoles in 2007, despite extreme shortages of the console in the lead-up to Christmas.

The Wii achieved an overall score of 8.78 out of ten, compared with 8.25 for the PlayStation 3 and 7.65 for the Xbox 360. Sony’s PlayStation scored highest on value for money, rating 7.96, versus 7.70 for the Wii and 7.15 for Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

The Wii was praised for its usability, child friendliness and exercise potential in verbatim comments from buyers collated by Reevoo. The award for best games titles also went to the Wii, scoring 8.08 out of ten, with the Xbox 360 scoring 6.81 and the PlayStation 3 scoring 5.71.

Richard Anson, CEO of Reevoo, said in a statement, “The Wii has been an absolute phenomenon this year and Nintendo would have cleaned up if availability had been better this Christmas.” But other consoles like Xbox fared well too, with Xbox scoring well for graphics and design. But the company failed to score significantly in other areas.

One aspect of the business that Nintendo would like to focus on right now is the huge gap in demand and availability. The severe shortage of Wii this Christmas left many children without their favorite gift. This holiday season saw some online shops a strange phenomenon where the online buyers had visited the web site, even before the stocks were available.

Many studios and developers who viewed the Wii as a risk in late 2006 are surely eating their hats now considering the runaway success of the brand. Many companies have stated they will be beefing up support for the Wii, so there is optimism that 2008 will see a healthier crop of games than 2007.

If the sky is the limit, then who knows where Nintendo will find themselves in 2008.