Borkachev on 17 June 2007
In short, if you want to claim that the race was totally decided last generation by this time period, you must conclude that this one is too. The Wii is outpacing the PS2 ssales, the PS3 is underperforming against the Gamecube and Xbox. In short, the Wii is beating the PS3 worse than the PS2 beat the Gamecube seven months after the launch windows closed.
I don't remember the early days of the last generation well enough to say if we knew it was decided by this point, but it's a huge oversimplification to say that things are the same now based on sales alone. There are a metric ton of unique factors at work this time that make it impossible to compare with the past.
To start with, the three companies are much more evenly matched this time in terms of what they're offering. It was easy to call the last generation because the PS2 had such an insurmountable advantage in release date, developer support, and positive buzz. None of the 3 competitors this time have anything close to a monopoly on these factors. Then there's the fact that 3 consoles have almost never had such a differential in power and price. Sony and MS are selling slowly, but not much more slowly than should be expected by their price point. We won't know just how badly people actually want them until they get down to a price more comparable to their predecessors. On the Wii's end, no console before has sold entirely on the basis of an innovative control scheme (well, you might argue that it's happened, but you'd have to go back to the NES days, which were too different to compare). We still don't know if the games that really take advantage of the remote will materialize, or if people will just tire of the graphics in a year or two, as the naysayers are predicting.
But most importantly, you have to consider developer support. When people say that every console's ultimate success has been predicted by its first 6 months of sales, they are missing a key point: early sales in the past have always been correlated with developer support, and this time they're not. Traditionally, before launch, developers choose the system they want to back based on what they like about it and which way the consumers seem to be leaning. The console that was expected to be best really does become the best, because that early confidence translates into games which translates into sales. When a console has failed, it's been because developers lacked that early confidence in it, and it floundered.
But this time things are different. PS3 was the system everyone was betting on early on, and they put their dollars behind it. When it stumbled out of the gate, it was entirely because of mistakes on Sony's part, not a lack of support. Meanwhile most publishers had written off the Wii, and when it turned into a runaway success they scrambled to get working on it. Microsoft, too, wasn't getting a lot of faith early on, but the 360 proved itself and the game makers responded. The important thing to take away from all this is that while Sony (and to a lesser extent, MS) is down in sales, it has not lost its developer support. 90% of console sales this generation haven't been made yet, and with strong developer support behind all three consoles, things could easily still shift.
I won't say these early sales don't predict anything. Wii is pretty much guaranteed a good life, while PS3 can't possibly see the success the PS2 did. But they mean a lot less than people are supposing they do.
