I will admit I should have added "in the home?"... to the title of my post. I honestly didn't realize how averse people here are to separating consoles and hand-helds. I mean, on the home page of vgchartz they even group them separately. Same with many of your sigs.
But all these accusations of cherry picking are pretty comical (and telling to your own bias'). When discussing consoles currently being sold, it would be cherry picking to leave out the unit that often comes in second (ahead of the PS3 and 360). The image of an ostrich with its head in the sand comes to mind. "The PS2 doesn't count anymore"... Really?! How can that be when it outsells the "upgraded" devices that you are comparing?
So, I see what is going on here... You guys want to limit the talk about "Who is doing best with ONLY their MOST RECENT console?"... That's totally fine, and fair. But pardon me for thinking we all knew the answer to that... You can see the home page here or, again, most of your sigs to see who is selling the most. Is that something that even needs discussion?
But I would encourage you all to be a bit more open to accepting what the PS2 has done and continues to do. And perhaps be a bit more alert to Sony's not-so-secret strategy (i.e. 10 year blah, blah, blah) with their PS3. Counting the actual sales of consoles into homes WITHOUT ignoring a big purple elephant is far from irrelevant.
Sony has TWO players in the home console market right now. The other two companies have one. It is not YOU (an opinionated individual) who determines when a console becomes irrelevant... it is the market. Sure, you can make a website and pretend that one console no longer exists... or that "it already won" so there's no need to look at it. But THAT is cherry picking.
What you all are doing is setting yourselves up so you can define "victory" by your own terms. And I'm not sure why it matters so much to many of you. From the responses here, these sales are being taken waaaay too seriously.
You want to define the PS2 as already having won, so you can ignore it. You want to define "next gen" as including the Wii against two very different devices (when we know that's arguable to many). And if/when the Wii's lifecycle is over, you want to call it as a win... even if the 360 (or more likely) the PS3 stretches past it in total sales by virtue of it being created with the intention of extending the typical gaming generation cycle.
...but you may be setting yourself up for failure. You may have to end up contradicting yourselves. With all the money that Nintendo is making, it may make sense for them to come out with a "HD Wii"... There's no way they'd discontinue the current Wii. So, what do you do at that point? Stop counting Wii sales and put the HD Wii in 3rd place... or all by itself as an uncontested winner?
I posted this thread to see what some of you would say... Honestly, I thought the MS people might be the most offended... (they're the upstart... this is only their second try...They're improving, even if they're behind in getting into your living room). But I don't think a company's past performance in the market can be discounted. Looking at the total sales of the PS1 and PS2 compared to any other consoles are pretty staggering. I have NO IDEA if that type of success is anywhere near possible... I suppose if they continued to sell at this same rate for 9 more years, then yeah. And it does appear that the Wii SHOULD be able to surpass Nintendo's best historical effort.
If Sony has really already sold 1/3 of its total consoles for the PS3, then I can tell you without hesitation that it (the PS3) will be considered a colossal failure. I definitely don't think that will be the case. Sony positioned the PS3 as a "long term investment". It may not do what the previous consoles did, but their strategy was conservative enough to assure some degree of success over time.
If you think that what Sony has learned with the PS1 and PS2 is all completely out the window and that it has no bearing on what will happen with the PS3, then I can see why any future success might surprise you. Maybe you'll be a blogger writing about the "comeback kid" because it is a good "story" and you just didn't see it coming. Maybe that will be because you made the decision to ignore how the PS2 continued in the face of newer and more capable consoles. Maybe you will forget how big of an issue pricing is... Maybe the move to HD by consumers will be surprising to you... Maybe you would have never expected that game to be THAT good... I don't know...
Or maybe you're right... and the PS3 will top out at about 30 mil and Sony will dump it.
Just remember, the past is prologue...
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