As an analyst (this includes armchair analysts) the best approach is to look at the past, gain perspective, and use history as a guide to predict the future.
The problem is that most analysts did not gain perspective on what had happened in the past and thus could not accurately predict the future. They saw the Playstation and PS2 as being popular because it had the Sony brand associated with it, and that they had large optical disc drives for their time and assumed that since the PS3 had these things it would be successful. The reality is that the Playstation and PS2 were so successful because they beat their main competition to market by a solid 18 months, only faced weak competition from Sega platforms and previous generation hardware, were affordable, and were targeted towards the more casual consumer rather than the dedicated gamer.
