Now that 5 months of American data are officially in, I think it is time to compare the 360, Wii and PS3 data to Xbox, GC, PS2 in their similar timeframes.  I'm also going to project a few things about PS3 and Wii in April NPD (which will actually include part of May..)

First thing though..when looking at the Gamedaily.biz archives, I came up with these numbers (USA only):

PS2 - 2,128,885 (6 month average ~ 354,815)

Wii - 2,110,200 (5 month average ~ 422,040)

Xbox - 1,903,366 (6 month average ~ 317,228)

Gamecube - 1,569,328 (6 month average ~ 261,555)

Xbox 360 - 1,504,822 (6 month average ~ 250,804)

PS3 - 1,188,700 (5 month average ~ 237,740)

Predictions for month 6 PS3/Wii

- Even with Motorstorm, PS3 March sales dipped about 5,000 per week on a week to week average.  With no software as big in April for PS3, and GH2 for 360 and Super Paper Mario for Wii selling strongly, PS3 sales should fall further.  This will seem worse because March was 5 weeks, and April will be 4.  I expect sales around 20-23k/week for 4 weeks.  I'll say another 90,000 will be sold, bringing the PS3 6 month total to 1,278,700 (6 month average ~ 213,317).  I actually believe the 90,000 will be appear better than it seems - because I am in the minority in believing Sony - they probably were supply contstrained in late March/early April when they had to ship an enormous number to Europe/Pal.  Therefore, most of their sales will be in mid-April when US stock levels normalize again, before dropping sharply in late April once Europe is down (up?) to US/Japan levels (of availability) .

- It seems Nintendo stopped shipping Wii's once they realized they met their target.  With increased production, and some extras arriving in early April from March, Wii sales are likely to be slightly higher in April than in March.  However, with Nintendo still shipping more (temporalily) to Europe to offset the PS3 launch, and to Japan, for Golden Week, I expect American sales to be 70-75k/week for four weeks.  Thus it will seem Wii demand is dying down, even though if the month was 5 weeks, sales would 350-375k - over 100k higher than the earlier month.  I'll say 300,000 Wii's will be sold in April.  That will bring the 6 month total to 2,410,200 (6 month average ~ 401,700) 

Quick notes:

PS3 is tracking below Gamecube in the launch window.

Wii is tracking above the essentially perfect PS2 launch...

Xbox 360 had similar launch window numbers to GC, but will likely do numbers higher than those need to double the GC USA user base.

PS2 had the best launch, PS2 sold the best.  Xbox had the second best launch, it came in second. GC had the third best launch it came in  3rd.

Wii already has guarenteed itself the best launch, while PS3 has perhaps a 1/25 chance of besting the Xbox 360 launch.  It seems all but impossible for Wii to not hold onto second, at least.

Finally, digging back even further, 2 million units in the USA in 6 months seems to be an all but guarentee of very nearly hitting, or passing 20 million (at least since consoles launches in the mid 90's).  This can be seen with N64 (2.0 million+ 6 months), Xbox (not quite 2 million in 6, but it likely would have hit 20 million with a longer lifespan in the USA), and PS2.  The only exception seems to be PS1 - which used an enormous period of little competition to ramp up.

Thank you so much for this thread. Everyone that says the PS3's sales are simillar to the PS2's so far should really look at this.

Just as a note, the PS2 launch was far from perfect and was heavily limited by supply; it wasn't until March 2001 when there were enough PS2 systems available to meet demand in North America at which point there was a huge spike.

Great thread, will we getan update afternext month? To se how close you were?

I didn't know that Wii was that close to PS2 in USA, that was really intressting.

Xbox360 numbers wasn't that good, can you dig up 12 months also? We now that xbox360 was heavy supply constrained in the start.

Out of curiousity how do they all stack up when looking at the worldwide sales numbers after 5 months?

Wii probably has more Demand then PS2 at that time had...

yes but the 6 month window does include that massive 600k march.  Perhaps Wii's huge month will be april.  Not gonna be 600k but perhaps 400k+

On a World Wide basis, I think Wii is slightly ahead of PS2.  But I don't have 5/6 month figures for Europe/Others.  In Japan, PS2 was slightly ahead of Wii at this point in it's launch I think.

Nice posts, makes sense if your saying this gen will be the same as the last 

but can u possibly do figures for the gen before that?

As far as i rember ps1 was the worst out of the 3 (saturn, n64 and ps1)

And we all know how that ended.  Not that there is anything wrong with your numbers - but we cant really assume beacuse it happened last gen it will happen this :) 

Good thread!