The Source did say that the FF brand had blown it's HW selling load in Japan earlier in 2009 with that FFVII movie release with FFXIII demo. Well we know that was a tad off base. Of course FFXIII sales outside Japan are going to be nothing like the were in Japan. The Americas pre-order chart is showing decent but not spectacular numbers, and the HW boost will be in proportion to the SW. In Japan about 1% of FFXIII buyers also bought a PS3 on the same day, it's reasonable to expect the same to happen in the rest of the world. So, it all depends on how much software the FFXIII brand will push.

Overall I agree with the source, there really aren't any more games coming for the rest of the generation that will lead to a long term upward shift in the sales of a console. I reckon even GT5 will only push HW for a relatively short period (again people saying GT5P has brought in a large number of the GT punters already).

GoW III will spike HW by a decent amount as pretty much the last highly acclaimed IP to come over from PS2 to PS3 (GoW collection doesn't count because almost no one was going to buy a PS3 just to play a game they've already played, no matter how much tweeking it got). Unless Jak 4 comes along some time; I can live in hope. I reckon Jak 4 could serve to get some PS2 -> Wii  folks to get on board with PS3.

Only thing is GoW period has never been a huge seller just like its genre.  Then factor in that a lot of the people that like its genre and were PS fans have picked up a PS3 already. Finally factor in people that are fans of the beatem up genre may have picked up a PS3 for either of the Ninja Gaiden Sigmas, DMC4 or Bayonetta/. This all leads to not much of a bump with hardware.

Not worldwide, but in North America specifically God of War performs better than Metal Gear Solid, and in North America MGS caused ps3 sales to spike 212% the week of its release.

MGS4 also came out almost 2 years ago, and wasn't following any significant releases in the same genre.

I was merely demonstrating that games that pull such numbers do have a decent amount of selling power.  God of War won't cause anything close to a 200% bump in hardware sales, but it'll do better than "not much of a bump".

Gears of War 2, Uncharted 2, and Mass Effect 2 even managed small bumps, and they're sequels to franchises that began on this generation of consoles.

Oh, I agree with that.  The "sequel won't sell hardware" idea is totally dumb imo.

I agree GOW3 will cause a bit of a bump too.  Nothing even close to MGS4 (which did double hardware iirc), but a bump none the less.