I don't know whether the PS3 will end up selling better than the Gamecube but the logic behind the arguments "The PS3 started out at a higher price" and "The PS3 will have a longer life" which lead to it (some how) having higher sales is flawed.

The first 18 months of a console's life are critical because it establishes a sales pace which determines the level of third party support. While it is true that the PS3 is more expensive this also has the effect of keeping it out of the price range of the average consumer, and thus causing slow sales, for 36 or 48 months; if in most generations 18 months was too long to wait for a recovery I'm positive that the PS3 will be seeing a really bad software drought by its 36th month. How many people rush out to buy a $300 console with no games?

Back in the day Nintendo claimed that they thought the Gamecube would last 8 years, after 4 years the system was coasting on fumes; the Wii is similar to the Gamecube in terms of processing power so we can assume that (since the Wii is selling well) the Gamecube's shorter than expected life had little to do with how powerful it was. Because of lower than acceptable initial sales third party developers found any excuse they could to not develop for the Gamecube and thus consumers were unwilling to spend the $100 to $150 to buy the system (even though many amazing games were released for it).

Basically, if third party support tanks due to low sales the PS3 is in a tough position because it is so expensive that few people will even consider buying the system for a handful of games ...

if the GC had (a real) Final fantasy and MGS, Gran turismo (or indeed ANY serious racing game), GTA, and the possibility of being the next gen movie player of choice, it would have done far far better. Its biggest guns were rare's support, which it lost, mario, which was a HUGE disapointment and Zelda, which many people (idiots) were put off by its cell shaded nature. There was also NO momentum from the previous gen, people wernt that interested in another Nintnedo machine in the first place.

Nintendo were unlucky and unprepared.
Sony are just being stupid (or maybe over ambitious/reliant with its fanbase), but they're learning, slowly.

Not a single idiot on this board was predicting that the PS3 would be ever be under-tracking the GC last year, so why is it unthinkable now that the PS3 could fail to sell GC's lifetime total? The problem with the 'PlayStation' brand is that it's highly dependent on third party support. That's the PlayStation's reputation in a nutshell, the system with the most games. If that link gets severed then there is really nothing to fall back on; Sony as a first-party publisher is credible but doesn't have much of a loyal following. Going into this generation they seemed to be in an invincible position. Publishers would support the PS3 because they assumed it'd have the largest userbase while consumers would buy the PS3 because they would assume it would have the most publisher support. But Sony did everything possible to piss that advantage away by overengineering and overpricing their system. Now it looks like it's going to be a XBOX360 port machine + blu-ray player. As such, it could easily undersell the GC.

Nintendo just sat back and relaxed, because the GC still made high profits. Thing about Sony is that they've invested billions into the PS3, and has a long term plan for the machine. That is why PS3 will definately outsell the GC.

^^^^^^

Yes, I agree. If Sony is willing to endure a billion dollar a year losses it will surely outsell the GC. But Sony doesn't have anywhere near the finacial strength as MS so maybe not.

No!

Nintendo realized that no matter how much money you throw at it you simply can not make a product popular; if you could, after losing $200 for every XBox sold (and $300 for every XBox 360 sold) the XBox would be the most popular system of all time.

QFT.

I don't think PS3 will sell less than GameCube in the long run, there are still tens of millions of PS2 fans for Sony to lose...but that said, they sure are doing an excellent job of losing them!

Ignorance prevails most of the time!

At launch
PS3 $600
GC $200


FF MGS GTA, did GC have those huge 3rd party games Hell no.