It worked somewhat for the 360, but thats not the only reason.

People underestimate what the 360 up against. You could have brought the xbox, ps2 and gamecube all for less than half the price of the 360 at launch. Sales only really picked up when Halo 3 launched.

Even if the PS3 launched at the same time, the price difference and quality of games would have made it sold more initially.

FYI, NES was out before the Master System. On to the point, according to your data it worked dramatically for Genesis, PS1, PS2, Xbox 360. All of them significantly increased market share. So yes, extremely important.

That Genesis / Mega Drive data is laughably incomplete, it's actually over 40 million. I doubt that it would have been nearly as successful if it had not beaten the SNES to the market by two years. The 2600, NES, PS1, PS2 and 360 all benefited from the early launches; it's clearly a very important factor. Furthermore, I wouldn't really factor anything SEGA did after 1993 into anything and the WiiU is a special case to say the least. Also, your assertion that the 2600 is part of the third generation is hilariously incorrect.

There are a few mistakes in your list:

3rd gen

Atari 2600 (1983) 27.64m The Atari 2600 was released in 1977, it's in no way comparable to the systems released in the 1980's, it certainly does not belong in the same "generation" of hardware as the capabilities are not even that similar.

Sega Master System (1985) 10-13m

NES (1985) 61.91m

4th gen

Turbo-Grafx 16 (1989)

Sega Genesis (1989) 29.54 m

SNES- (1991) 49.10 m (The SNES sold for 3 or 4 years after Sega discontinued the Genesis, Nintendo actively promoted it and some of the greatest titles of its lifetime were released after 1994.. most of the extra 20 million systems were sold there)

Now my answer: It depends, your product needs to be compelling enough, a console like the Wii U that came with ports of PS360 games that ran worse than they did on the 6 years old machines cooled down a lot of potential buyers!

The NES was released a while before the Sega Master system, it enabled Nintendo to gain a stronghold on third party contracts and gave them a lot of great exclusives titles...

Also, the xbox 360 was 1 year ahead of the PS3 and it seems like it took a lot of ex Sony customers, with a mix of great early titles and good hardware... now you can argue the PS3 catched on later and the Wii made all this moot, but imagine if the 360 would have been released 2 weeks after the PS3, people would barely know MS released a second console.... so yes.

TL:DR; It makes a difference, but there are many other factors, you have to release something people actually want!

Yes of course, provided the console is actually good and not destined to be a failure.

I agree it doesn't work. Contrary to what many think it didn't actually work for the 360. in their year on teh market they had only managed around 8M in sales by the time the PS3/Wii was released. The wii showed that releasing first doesnt make a difference. Sony just really messed up last gen. That gen was theirs to lose. And the seemingly went outta their way to do just that.

Dreamcast sold 10.6 million. NES was release in 1983 as Famicom.
360 was very successful. Atari 2600 was successful. DS outsold PSP. Genesis vs SNES was the most heated and close race in the history of consoles. Genesis vs SNES as as heated as WCW Nitro vs WWF Raw is War

not always there are several condition to success on releasing earlier for example:

1. The console should be the same as powerful and cheaper with their rival which will come out later ( Xbox 360 with PS3 for the comparison )

2. If the console is less powerful it should be famous or have more brand recognition ( PS2 and Xbox original )

3. If the later console is powerful and have more brand recognition but failed by there own mistake also will help the earlier one win by default ( N64 and PS1 ) .

just my own observation trough history thou

edit: yeah for Xbox 360 they did on last even they started one year earlier but imagine if they didn't get the opportunity, they wouldn't get on the same praise like now.

When ps3 will sell 95m?...it is in its 8th year,ps2 had been discontinued after 11 year!so three years till ps3 death!84.7m by the end of 2014,another 10.3m in three years when it is down 60% and will be even lower in the upcoming years!The best scenario is about ending with 90m(I estimate 88m),sorry!

On topic now!It depends,in wii u case not,because wii hurted it!Wii cut sales from wii  u and wii u from wii...!wii u first year blemish this year sales!it would be quite higher if it had released along with the competitors!

If your consoles doesn't suck, yeah, probably.