Do these sales numbers surprise you? [Sony Still Dominant?!?]

[blykmik]

Parokki said:

blykmik said:

No one forced Nintendo or MS not to continue to support their past great systems. Maybe they realized those systems couldn't last? I don't know the reasons for stopping the support.

But Sony DID choose to support the PS2... and apparently the public does too.

It wasn't as much a question of supporting or not supporting. The Gamecube and Xbox had lost momentum and developer support, so they were essentially dead. They wouldn't have been killed if they'd died first. The PS2 stayed alive because it kept selling, and new games are still being made.

That's why talking about a company's plan to support a console for 10 years is utter lunacy. The continued sales and developer support are what determines a consoles lifespan, not PR hype.

Huge lifespans are not an inherent feature of Sony consoles. They're an inherent feature of extremely succesful ones.

I don't know about "lunacy"... perhaps a bit cocky though.  (Has Sony ever been accused of that?)

But your point is well taken.  However, being "extremely succesful" does not happen by accident... it takes quite a bit to get there.  Sony and Nintendo have both proven that they can be successful... very successful. 

I think the numbers in this post show two different ways to have success.

 ... I don't know, but I think I understand what Sony's strategy is and it doesn't appear as though it is going to fail to me.  As everyone keeps pointing out, price is a huge factor in sales.  The PS3 was built in 2006... it will only continue to go down in price.  I think this will make it more and more competitive over time.  It is definitely a capable machine, I'm not sure how great a leap something could make in the next 3-5 years that would end up being as cheap as a PS3 then.  And then there's the task of getting people to buy a new console... again.