It's enough for me!

agreed. ur very reasonable. need to find more people on this site like u.

@op

Yes it can.

your user name and avatar are blatant contradictions.

last place is last place. 

and its people like you prove that people actually do care if their console of choice is last place. 

Eh? Was that addressed to me?

no the thread maker

PS3 won't beat Wii. It isn't a question of hardware though, the problem preventing a comeback for PS3 is software. PS3 is doomed to fall well below Wii on the hardware because of its software.

If you compare Wii, PS3, and PS2 game purchasing rates over fiscal years one to five (worldwide launches - I'm excluding the year PS2 was available in only Japan for one month of the 2000 fiscall year), PS3 is already down to a rather low purchasing rate per user.

                          Wii          PS3             PS2       Games Purchased Per Avg Console User by Year

FY 3/2007       4.94         3.75        3.34             FY 3/2001

FY 3/2008       4.89         4.57         4.25            FY 3/2002

FY 3/2009       4.06         4.56        3.70            FY 3/2003

FY 3/2010       2.75         3.24        3.11            FY 3/2004

FY 3/2011       2.20         2.66       2.88             FY 3/2005

For a console that is supposedly "hardcore", much more so than PS2 was by reputation, people sure are set to buy hardly any games for the thing, 5% less than PS2 at the comparable point in time even if PS3 beats my guess and ends up as a 140m market this fiscal year year, and that is when PS2 had a 35m units larger and more diversified base of users (85m ). If PS3 sells 15m again in the next 15m or even 17m in the next fiscal year its great for Sony, but its for publishers its bad.

Why? Because user rates are set to fall to two games per user (and thats conservative by history - will probably be more like 1.8 or 1.9). 67m * 2 = 134m games which would be down a smidge from this year, and unlike Carl and some of the others, I don't think Sony has the balls to cut PS3 to $200 in 2011 when its still selling well and a cut of that magnitude forks over more profit. Without that big price cut, you figure PS3 drops to 13m-14m next year. When that software purchasing rate falls to two games per user - thats the start of the end for PS3 - hardware sales of any magnitude - even DS peak levels (31m in a year) won't be able to mask the software declines.

New generations don't start because of hardware guys. That is completely irrelevant if software shipments fall. Software pays for everything.

Also, for the record, popular Nintendo systems do sell well after their successors are introduced:

NES after SNES: 21.7m units (35% of total shipped systems)

SNES after NES: 6.8m (15% of total shipped systems)

GBA after DS: 30.05m units (37% of shipped GBAs)

DS after 3DS: ??

Wii is a healthier market than NES ever was in the West. No reason to think it can't sell 20-30m units after the successor thats due out in late 2012.

You also have to remember that PS3 is trending below PSP, which has far less compelling software to push it. PSP also has less competition, and sells at a lower price. Those using price cut,as an argument aren't terribly off but the problem is price cuts become less effective over time. Ask yourselves which would be more effective - Sony dropping the PS2 to $20 tommorow or Nintendo dropping the Wii to $120 tommorow. Wii has had exactly one price in four years, and its still tracking slightly ahead of the PS2 pace for software in the West mainly because of the USA, and hardware. To reach 87m PS2s shipped by March 2005, Sony needed a price cut to $200, a price cut to $180, overwhelming third party support, exclusive first party games, a 13 month lead on rival consoles, and the PS2 Slim. None of these exist for PS3 - even with larger price cuts by volume and % launching after X360 and next to Wii has hurt wooing publishers, and fractured third party support. Sony has a Move user base of unique users of around 1-2m people. Thats fine, but on Wii the motion-market is going to top 80m very shortly. Given a Wii 2 launch in November 2012, and something similar from Sony / Microsoft with software in steady decline by then, PS3 / X360 will decline rapidly from that point as the people buying the most games, who are most insatiable, begin to move on to new systems.  I still think PS3 can get to 70m, and maybe X360 too, but don't pretend Wii won't lift dramatically when it gets to $150 or $100, not to record sales, but $150 in April 2011 would likely keep Wii over 14m / 15m for the year, and for all we know PS3 may never get below $200 the PS2 is still $100 after a decade. On the other hand, I don't think its too difficult to see Wii selling for $150 in most of 2011, $130 late in 2012, and $100 in 2013. It doesn't look like the Wii pricing advantage is ever going away. Wii is likely to reach 100m by the end of 2011, and so unlike PS3, the low purchasing rates (likely 1.4 or so by that point) are less of a problem. Essentially 100m * 1.4 is better than 64m * 1.6 for 2011 given thresholds for profit and that by that point millions of motion games will be bundled per year for both systems. With aggressive price cuts, there is no reason Nintendo can't sell 120m or 130m Wiis, and its hard to imagine PS3 getting much past 80-85m even in a best case scenario, with 70-80m the most likely outcome. For people saying Nintendo's price cut was ineffective - are you guys looking at our data? Wii sales increased by 13 fold last year from pre-price cut to peak December week. That was NOT NSMB Wii. In a normal year, a price cut results in a 7-8 fold pre-price cut to peak week increase over Christmas. Without a price cut, Wii was increasing by only six fold from fall to its peak December weeks. PS3 / X360 were increasing by 5 fold. When PS3 / X360 had price cuts it only increased from 6 fold to a 7.5 gold increase. The Wii price cut was almost scarily effective. I don't think you can expect bigger price cut lifts for PS3 than the growth from $400 to $300 given that PS2 sold very well at $300, and since the $300 price point had a new Model.

Overall, my inclination is PS3 can / will pass X360, and end up with a base of 75m or so. Microsoft will still beat Sony in North America, and probably the UK, but in just about every other market X360 is fairly likely to be third, and distant third in many cases. You have to remember the best X360 year to date, by shipments is 11.2m (to be bested in the year ending December 2010 slightly), and that means two big declines will take X360 down to 5-8m or whatever. We're still on pace for at least 260m systems shipped this generation, solid 30% growth from last gen, with Nintendo picking up something like 100m users, Sony losing 70m users, and Microsoft gaining 35m users.

The software accounts for the majority of hardware sales. Wii with all its  mega hit Nintendo first party games and endless amounts of smaller selling new titles help push the Wii sales. The Wii software games releases are equal or greater tha the amount of games released on PS3 and 360 combined. Wii is  a lot cheaper and easier to develop games for and developers can bring out lots of new games for the Wii. 

PS3 and 360 head to head  have released roughly the same amount of software if we exclude the 360s head start. PS3 and 360 software are 80% the same library. PS3 leads the 360 in regards to graphics capabilities in exclusive games and PS3 has more exclusive games than the 360. 360 shares a lot of games with PC and half of the 360 exclusives are only console exclusive games. 

PS3 is still priced higher than both the Wii and the 360: PS3 has a couple more price cuts up its sleeve. PS3 may close down the gap on Wii to around 30m when the console wars are at the end. Overtaking the Wii is more than likely not going to happen. PS3 should over take the 360 in 2011 and finish second comfortably ahead of the third placed 360. 

So PS3beats360 finally comes to his senses?