Is the PS3 a failure in America?(Compared to the PS2 &PS1)

[binary solo]

Duh! Yes. Compared to PS1 and PS2 (esp PS2) PS3 is a failure everywhere. But that's because PS1 and PS2 are the second best and best selling home consoles ever in the entire history of consoles.

Compared to all consoles ever launched by any console makers though PS3 is a success in terms of number of consoles sold (Average sales of all home consoles listed on VGC database is ~45 million). But it's still an open question as to whether Sony would have made a profit from this console generation. Given only a few consoles actually made losses for their manufacturers in terms of what's important to companies (profit) PS3 has not done well, except that longer term it has ensured PS4 has a reasonable chance at doing well and being profitable. So at least PS3 did well enough to prevent Sony from being forced to exit the game console business. However PS3 also ensured that Blu-ray won the format war vs HD-DVD, and that's rather hard to quantify in terms of direct benefit to Sony.

So the end result: PS3 has been successful in some respects, but it has also been a failure in other respects. An objective analysis would say you can't call PS3 either a complete failure or a complete success. So it all depends on what aspect of PS3 performance you want to emphasise, which generally is determined by you bias for or against PS3 / Sony.