Anyways ... I think things got WAY off topic here ...
A comparison between the Gamecube and PS3 is very valid because the PS3 will (likely) face many of the same problems that plagued the Gamecube; this is an important because depending on how well Sony handles it will determine whether they end up more or less successful than Nintendo was with the Gamecube.
One key problem will be third party relationships ...
Back with the Gamecube it wasn't really until 2003 (about 18 months after the cube was released) that it became obvious that there was a serious problem. At that point few exclusive third party games were being announced, many previous multiplatform games suddenly didn't have a Gamecube version, and regardless of which version sold better or worse third party publishers would blame the Gamecube for poor sales; one instance of this happening was Acclaim blamed the poor sales of Turok Evolution on the Gamecube and announced that they were going to stop producing Gamecube games (this was particularly insulting because it was an awful game and ALL versions of Turok sold poorly).
It was rumored (although never proven) that Microsoft was a major factor in these troubles because there were incentives to make Exclusive XBox games, or simply to prevent the Gamecube from having a port of the game; the theory was that if Microsoft couldn't have the only version of a game they wanted to have the best version of the game by a wide margin and the processing power difference between the Gamecube and XBox was not large enough to ensure that. It doesn't matter whether this rumor is true, the fact that Microsoft was able to use its larger American userbase through strong third party relationships to receive a lot of games the Gamecube didn't get is important.
... Anyways, the thought that the PS3 doesn't need to sell well today because it can sell well down the road is foolish because for every week/month that they're trailing behind the XBox 360 and Wii makes skipping the PS3 version of a game that much more compelling.
