One way to look at it is the size of the US market. The US (retail) video game market was like $10-$15 billion before the Wii / DS era, and PS2 was 60% of that for marketshare vs. Nintendo / Sony, while with PS3 Sony is in the low 20% range for market share....but the market is $18-$22b per year now which means Sony really only lost a third of its PS2 revenue with PS3 (although far more by units obviously due to pricing)
PS3 is $600 * 2m + $500 * 3m + $400 * 4m + $300 * 9m roughly speaking for hw vs. PS2 at ~$300 * 7m + $200 * 20m + $130 * 19m.
That's an oversimplification for hardware without checking the exact figures but I think its roughly right so currently you have:
$700m in PS3 hw revenue, with PS3 maybe to sell 10-11m units more at an average of $180 or something in the USA. Potentially $8.8b in HW revenue - but most of it sold for a loss.
$8.6b in PS2 hw revenue to date, most of it sold at break even or slight profit a year or two into the cycle.
For software, PS2 reached about 500m games (11 games * 46m roughly) in the USA I believe. Call it 55m * $20 returned to a publisher on average for 10 years, or $1.1b on average.
For software PS3 is around 9 games for 18m users - 162m games roughly. Call it 33m * $30 returned to a publisher on average for five years, $990m on average.
The issue again is the last two years of PS2 have basically been irrelevant, so its more fair to do 500m / 8 when comparing vs. PS3, in which case you get 62.5m * $20, or $1.25b in software to publishers.
Basically, PS2 was a much more economically fair and equitable base for publishers, a bigger revenue producer for Sony, and a far more popular platform as a result. That said, PS3 is a much easier platform to produce hits for than PS2 was in two or three genres - particularly violent western content.
Failure is too strong a word probably but I'd say if PS3 reaches 25-30m in the USA, and it should top out in that range, those are pretty average figures for the USA market now. NES, GB, PS1, PS2, GBA, DS, X360, Wii have all previously reached 28m or more in the USA. Genesis, SNES, N64, GC, Xbox, PSP, PS3 have not so far and only PS3 even has a shot at it.
Reaching 30m requires essentially a three year period where a system sells 15m, which is 65,000 per week more or less, and then four to eight years for another 15m. You don't even need that broad steadiness, a peak year of 7m (100k / non-holiday week), or two years of 5m or better basically assure 30m now in the USA. Wii is actually in its fifth year of topping about 65k per week (~62k per week so far in 2011), and had three years at the 100k a week pace / 7m plus pace as a comparison. Whats strange about PS3 is it may only sell above 5m in a 12 month period once or no times - and still reach 30m because its hung around 3.5m - 4.5m for so long already. It looks like PS3 will top out at around 13m-14m in its best three year period, against 30m for DS, 27m for Wii, 21m for PS2 with PS1 (and X360) at 18m in its best three years.
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
When there are more laws, there are more criminals.
- Lao Tzu
