if ps3 doesnt match ps2 with sales will it be called a failure

[Retrasado]

HappySqurriel said:

With how the PS3 has performed so far, it will be a miracle if the PS3 is not considered a failure (or a stumble if you'd prefer). Realistically, Sony has a pretty tough battle ahead in order to become profitable on the generation, to not lose a ton of third party support, to sell to 1/3 of PS2 owners, and to not come in third place.

Certainly, the PS3 will have performed better than most when it comes to raw sales numbers (and to a lesser extent marketshare) but on its own this is a pretty hollow measure; the only company which has fallen as far as Sony will (probably) fall in this generation is Nintendo, and it took Nintendo 3 successive generation of constantly increasing competition to fall that far.

I don't want people to misunderstand what I am saying to mean that the PS3 is selling at an awful rate. I do think it is important to look at a consoles performance in context with the previous systems to determine whether it was successful or not; as an example, even though the XBox 360 and PS3 may end up selling at a similar level (roughly 40 Million) I would consider the XBox 360 successful whereas the PS3 would be a failure because the XBox 360 would represent growth in userbase size as well as marketshare.

Wow man, where have you been for the last 5 months? In the first paragraph, you made two absolutely ridiculous statements. first of all, Sony has announced that they are pretty much breaking even with the 40 GB PS3 and I think I am safe in saying that they will be able to drop the cost of production further in the next few years. (especially after they dropped production costs by more than $400 in just one year). Second, the PS3 has sold more than a million consoles more than the 360 had sold at this amount of time after launch and no one EVER said devs were going to abandon the 360 last year; so why the heck would they abandon a console that even in its worst year managed to sell a million units more than a console that was $100-$150 cheaper? 

As to your statements in the second paragraph, you must remember that it is very unlikely considering how the PS3 performed last year in spite of the plethora of bad press and near total lack of good games that it will finish in last place in this gen. Also, the reason it took Nintendo "three generations" (actually, it was two unless you mean to imply that the SNES was a failure) to "fall that low" was because there was, for all practicle purposes, two consoles on the market: the PS and the N64, so how could Nintendo fall to third place in a gen that had two major consoles?

While I mostly agree with the last paragraph of your comment, the first two sound like they came from someone who either lives in last July, lives in a 360 fanboy fantasy world, or comes from another planet.