Hey, great thread. People oftentimes look at brand and ignore the business aspects and the changing circumstances, which affected the success of the brand in the first place. I think PS3 sales will end up in the 50-60 million range. Higher than a 50% decline from PS2. I think they are significantly more vulnerable than Nintendo ever was in terms of potential one-generation losses (20-40%), but far less vulnerable than Sega (something like 70% lost). In terms of the all-important "number of known games" stat... Gamespot's lists show the numbers, and it makes it pretty obvious PS2-like domination is not in the works for PS3. They list 398 XB360 games, roughly 50-60 of those being XBLA games I would guess... They list 273 Wii games, including exactly 66 VC games, and they list 238 PS3 games, including the handful of known PSN games. Probably not scientific, but interesting.

Seriously, now..... Going on Sony's past record these systems are out on the market for 10 years. Chances are after the end of the second year or into its third year sony will start to make profit. From that point on whether it will be a price drop or a redesign why on earth does 60 million sound like a failure? No one predicted that the PS1 or the PS2 would hit 100 million but they both did. But I am not going to rule out the possiblity of the PS3 selling 100 million either because no one knows what the market will look like a few years from now. Sony makes a large bulk of thier money off of licensing and royalties. Even if the sold 60 mill If their attach rate is higher than the PS2 I do not think they will be crying. Hey Erik did the PS2 have an overwhelming amount of titles to its console upon release? I think the large number of 360 titles are because of market share and dev acclimation. I would imagine the Wii is in for some quick cash-ins because of the architecture. I don't expect any really unique titles for either the PS3 or the Wii until next year. @sieanr I didn't play that many games that were multi-disk for the PS2 or the DC. So I imagine that would be something I wouldn't want to go back to but even as such games like GTA, Spiderman, Oblivion would probably not be the same experience. Let us see something. The RPG's that were multidisc on the PS1 "ALWAYS" blocked portions of the game off. Certain areas could not be accessed because the data was not on the disk (most likely could not fit) and it was clever design that prevented most from noticing. I had a lot of time when I was younger and I noticed this big time. So imagine FFXII (if you have played it) broken up into 12 disks (assuming the game is 9 gigs, 6 if not). Because the world is so large and certain characters are located in different places to get a side quest done while warping through towns could easily have you switching 3 discs multiple time in a period of less than 30 minutes. Now if the SE devs knew that this would be an issue it would have been designed around but the huge free world of FFXII is part of its appeal. Changing discs was a limitation. I do not see any reason why people are trying to defend it. We will see how it is worked out when blue dragon is released.

You hit the nail on the head with that one Erik. A console doesn't succeed just because it's manufacturer wants it too. I really find it hard to believe that 7 or 8 years from now the PS3 will be the "everybody wants it" system.

Erik is right. People keep touting the 10 year life span for the PS3. If Sony is in third place this gen, the PS3 will not have a 10 year life span. If its in Second place it most likely won't either. The first place system almost always has an extended life span. Third party developers have a hard time leaving behind the industry's largest userbase. Honestly I don't see any of the three current gen consoles having a 10 year life span at this point. The 360 will probably have a 6 or 7 year life span. The Wii* and PS3 will most likely have a 5 year lifespan. *I don't see the Wii going beyond 5 years unless it absolutely dominates the market in a NES/PS1/PS2/GB/GBA/DS type fashion.