Is it just me, or has anyone noticed... It's generally a sony trend. http://www.vgcharts.org/aconscomps.php?name1=PS&name2=PS2&type=0&align=0 For the first holiday season 'after launch' for the Sony consoles to not be at their prime. It is the 2nd holiday season after launch that they peak in sales. (for both home consoles at least) And in all honesty looking at PS1 and PS2 sales, they are very similar. The PS3 sales are quite similary to PS1 monthly. Makes me wonder how things will turn out.

PS peeked on its 4th holiday, PS2 on its 3rd, GC on its 3rd, XB on its 4th... Nothing unique.

You know, every time i look at those charts I think to myself 'nothing but december matters in the us'

I admit I expect PS3 and 360 to each sell a bit more than Wii this Christmas in North America. It's because of a problem that MS and Sony don't have, it'll sell out before Christmas and won't have enough stock to put up comparable numbers. ;)

The PS1 didn't take off until FF7 came out. Check the sales and when FF7 came out, it adds up. It was the HUGE game it needed.

I think even if it would be sony-specific to sell slow during the first year and then increase in sales, I wouldn't put to much hope in that fact, kwaad. ps1 and ps2 both had a one-year head-start over their real competitors, while ps3 was the last console of its generation to launch, and with late launch and a poor first year, the gap could already be to big when the sales start increasing.

Most consoles see more holiday success in later years. But if your trying to use that as proof of the PS3's luring succcess, you're getting kind of desperate. First off, there's what nintendo_fanboy has already said. Secondly, the PS3's sales are at their worst when compared to the PS2's sales, which had awesome launch period numbers. So far the PS3 is 400,000 short of the PS2 in NA and 1.7 million behind the PS2 in Japan. You're getting desperate Kwaad. You can still love your PS3 while admiting it's sales aren't very good right now by any measure.

I think Kawaad is right to a point. Although we can't say how the PS3 will do (and its obviously no PS1 or PS2), it can easily have some good holidays if it had the right software and price drops. Everyone defends the Wii sales in my thread(s) about how the Wii production will ramp up, sell insane, how the Wii is not selling like the N64 in the US (which it is, as the N64 sold out for the first 6-8 months). I would think by now, with every generation we've seen, one thing is sure: You can't place your bets on any system and how well it does translating into how well it'll do the rest of it's life. The N64 outsold the PS1 LTD for the first 2 years, then to only be beaten by 2:1 and 3:1 the next 3 years. The Dreamcast opened up with the biggest 1st month in gaming history only to sell the least systems of any major console in the US (Sega, Nintendo, MS, Sony) The XBox lost it's company far more money than DC/GC, or any low-selling console, but MS still remained in the market. Despite being useless in Japan, the Sega Genesis sold very well to the Nintendo powerhouse, and made the SNES sell quite a bit less than the NES. I'm not trying to be a Wii basher, but with every console but the PS2 changing it's sales somewhere in mid stream, early stream, or late stream, it's entirely possible that the sales for both systems could randomly change and every prediction everyone has had could go awry. Could the Wii sell 120+m? Possibly. Could the PS3 sell 80m? Possibly. Could the 360 beat the Wii and PS3 for global sales? Possibly. None of those scenarios are remotely likely. However, I NEVER EVER would of thought the PS1 would of sold like it did when I bought my N64 some 10 years ago. Sales change every generation. Not only this, there are FAR more consoles to go around this generation. Everyone here seems to be FAR to pessimistic even with the most optimistic console sales. In the PS1 generation, there were around 162,000,000 hardware units sold worldwide. This most recent generation, JUST the PS2 has a chance to get close to those numbers itself, and total worldwide sales for all systems will reach roughly 200 million units (50m for Xbox/GC, currently 125m with PS2 and all 3 are still selling, with PS2 probably reaching another 10-15 or more million units). Because of that, and Nintendo's 'blue ocean' strategy of trying to get more units sold to non-gamers (which IMO is working), there was about a 20-30m increase from generation over generation. We could easily have that # increased without the fact the Wii is doing what it is. So lets say this generation sales STAGNATE and do not increase: We still have just under 200 million hardware units sold. Which is intresting, because no one but myself has remotely predicted anywhere near 200m total console sales this generation: Everyone either predicts PS3 with around 75m and 360/wii having around 100m total, a decrease of 20m units generation over generation, or the Wii wins by 80m-100m to 30-40m for 360/PS3 each, which is still around 160-180m units. So you see, there are tons of consoles to go around for sale - more than any other generation. Far more with the Wii. So we have to understand that someone is going to take a decent chunk (or everyone will take) a decent chunk of the hardware sales. IMO, no one really is going to 'lead' in terms of total hardware sales over this line of systems. Nintendo will eventually with a Wii revision. But again, we're really only 4 months into this. 4 months into the PS2/Xbox/GC, I am sure no one would of thought the race would be 120/25/23.

mrstickball, My sales predictions total 230 million consoles sold this generation. Including 150 million Wiis. I'm revising the numbers all the time though. I agree with you that people should stop these "50 million of each console" predictions, and choose a higher total sales number. The big argument for their being fewer sales, or similar sales to previous generations is the higher price tag on two of the consoles... My answer to this is simply that the Wii will have to make up the difference!

Erik Aston: 150 million Wiis? http://youtube.com/watch?v=J5-Bp9oaCBY