History says that it's not the console specs or techs that determine the success, but the mass-market appeal for S/Ws that it produces, entertaining the consumers. For the last two consecutive gen, it was PS1 and PS2. Xbox was launched a year later than PS2 with better features like even a Hard-drive and superior specs, but it went out to fail miserably. Why? It failed to attract many consumers who were only brand-conscious, whilst PS2 had already established itself with it's decent S/W library, all credited to 3rd party dev-supporters. The Xbox eventually lost hold of 3rd party support and winded up with a LTD of 24 mn gross. This time, PS3 has come under the scrutiny, involving itself in the format war to hinder Blue-Ray Progress. Altthough it won the war, Blue-Ray has apparently failed to attract the mass for which Sony had to pay the price. But since the media is not meant for HD movies alone, which most of us ignore, it's like the CD-ROM of PS1 allowing higher data storage for games than it's competitors. Although PS3 has failed to attract mass with it's current technology, it can continue to add momentum along with 360 till market saturation is reached. On the other hand, 360's progress was hindered due to the H/W failure rate around 2007. If this hadn't happened, a lot many consumers who were price-value concious would've bought it more, thus accelerating the sales. We need to wait and see which of the 2 consoles, both coming of losses, breath their last this gen. The Wii has to be ignored, as it's S/W line-up doesn't attract hardcore gamers at all. It's success needs to be discussed out of this context, as it's not capable of delivering what ps3 and 360 are currently doing.This was not the scenario in previous gen, where consoles like GC, PS2 and Xbox were capable of delivering more or less same S/Ws end products.
