Thats the most nonsensical thing I've ever heard. If Sony was irrelevant to people it wouldn't have sold more in its worst gen than Nintendos second best selling console (think about it). Sony  as a gaming entity isn't becoming more irrelevant to anyone, they have no names that they built on the original PSP that people are awaiting for on the PSP Vita. They built it up completely wrong. Dissidia & Monster Hunter will be the PSP Vita console movers. Jak and Daxter sell more on the PSP than they ever sold on consoles, so I move that a team is created to create another version of that game on the PSP Vita. They need to also get Square to put another side quest final fantasy out on the Vita which will inspire Japanese sales. They need more JRPG's. 

Nintendo felt the pain of launching the DS, so they had to cut the price of the product to get the market to response more appropriately to it. Sony runs their console more fluidly than they run their handheld and Nintendo runs their handhelds better than they've run their consoles in the last two generations. The Wii was a one time deal and Nintendo was dumb not to capitalize off of that audience with a next gen console that could keep the attention of the casuals. Now they have a Nintendo console that plays core games with a touch screen.....yeah...watch. The 720 and PS4 will swallow it whole because Nintendo hasnt been the head of the core games section in twenty years.

*handing over grain of salt*

I feel the 8th generation is going to be a lot closer in sales than even the 7th generation. I don't see the market growing substantially anymore, even shrinking slightly, due the influence of more and more smart devices (even tv's themselves are able to do advanced things today), economic factors that will plague at least the first year of the generation and the fact that for the regular person, the PS3 and XBox360 they likely by now have are 'good enough'. Of course, 'real' gamers are, but I'm not convinced many 'casuals' that bought into the Kinect/Wii Motion craze, are jumping to buy new game systems.

The slow decline of the PlayStation brand in this past generation will likely continue, especially if Sony launches last. It's likely the PS4 will be 'inferior' to the XBox specs-wise, and because the latters rising popularity in the US, I see the next XBox win the generation. Nintendo will lose sales, but a lot of gamers will still get the WiiU because of it's exclusives.

Final count at the start of the 9th generation:

NXBox: 90m

WiiU: 75m

PS4: 70m

For the first month at leasy WiiU had the advantage of launching right before the holiday season, which ensures high numbers. Which it had. I see Microsoft launching around the same time, which mean it'll likely at least do similar numbers. I don't see enough PS4 rumours yet to determin wether or not Sony will release during holiday or rather in early 2014. If it's the latter, Sony automatically loses first month numbers. Regardless of the exclusives.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the rest of your post, but in this context, this is an unfair comparison. The NES existed over 20 years ago, and the market was almost 4 times smaller than it is right now. The NES's share was about 63m out of a, say, 73m market. That's a marketshare bigger than even the PS2. Even though you are correct in saying the PS3 sold more in absolute numbers, relatively this was definitely not the case. It's best compared to inflation really.

But anyway, carry on!

Considering the PS3's first years can be alluded to a train wreck slowly unfolding and still managed to stay close to the 360's sales 6 years later, i'd say that the PS4's launch would have to involve multiple trains, planes and boats colliding in order for the Nextbox to outsell it.

What logic is this?

The market doubled once Sony joined, theres no unfair comparison. Sony legitimized consoles as formidable videogame consoles in the media and everywhere else as legit multimedia tech. They were no longer toys. They increased the size of the market based on demand for those consoles and as Sony grew their marketshare shrank, plain and simple. Nintendos marketshare grew as they got the non-gamers to enjoy simple gaming, so are you going to downsell that by calling it inflation? No. 

Are you in disagreement? Sony has picked up the pace.

wiiU - 50M
ps4 - 50M
nextbox - 50M

Wow...demand really shrank for consoles and the Wii U selling on par with the PS4 and next box without casuals? Hmmmmm thats a pretty tall order.

It's hard to make a prediction when you don't even know the release date of neither console nor do you know anything about them (specs, price etc). I would say that if the PS4 and next Xbox release during the similar time frame and are almost identical in terms of price and specs then the PS4 would outsell the Xbox. By how much, I have no idea.

the number of gamers won't shrink, but where they can go to play will increase and facture the market.  imo.