The Gamecube was a poor seller for Nintendo, but it a DID make a profit. XBox certainly did not. M$ has lost billions of dollars in the gaming industry. Nintendo has made nothing but money. It really depends on what success is defined as. N never sells a system for a loss, they are a frugal company and do not believe in losing money like gangbusters (See M$ & Sony) to hope & pray for future sales. They don't believe in losing money at all. That's a basic difference in philosophy that will never cause them to lose more money in gaming in one year than they made in ten, which happened to sony this year. The PS3 is powerful alright. So powerful it took all the profits from PSx & the highly successful PS2 and erased them. Gone. At least so far. I'm not saying the PS3 might not make money and become a big seller, but it's unknown. Sure it's a great machine, great power, great graphics, but the truth is it devours money. Nintendo sells systems and games at a profit from day 1. I know they could have made a more powerful system and lost money on it, but they chose to innovate with unique controls and concentrate on making games fun. And they chose to expand the market, which helps all 3 consoles. So we all have a lot more gamers in the world because of it.

I think N selling more Wii's than the entire Playstation family is far-fetched, but you can't argue that Nintendo has created more gamers than any other company making games. And now they are bringing gamers back to gaming. Expect the unexpected.

In all of this analysis of what might happen in 2008 and beyond, I think we should consider something about who is actually going to be purchasing systems in year 2 of a console's life and beyond.

Can we assume that the majority of hardcore gamers will already have bought their primary system of this gen? Therefore surely we have to primarily assess what main-stream gamers, kids and the new 'casual' gamers are going to be buying.

Main-stream gamers: brand loyalty is important and systems with established franchise games they connect with (PS3 has the brand, XBOX360 has the games and momentum from early release, Wii is something new which got me reinvigorated)
Kids: based on peer-pressure / fads / games to a lesser extent (at the moment: Wii, but this could swing)
Casuals: Wii all the way

Taking this into consideration, I would have to say that the Wii doomsayers have flawed arguments. Maybe people could go into this a bit deeper, but I think its an important question: What demographics will the ongoing buyers be from? This will determine if Wii will continue to sell this well.

It will slow down ... not dramatically , but it will . It depends a lot of how well games like Wii fit and SSMB will do next year ... if their performance will not be stellar , than sales could take a huge hit ...

 Nintendo has a safety valve of their own. Right now it's called DS.

 Sorry friend but you are one of the gamers who is becoming marginalized by the Wii, it doesn't matter if you get another system, because most consumers aren't, most are going to get the Wii alone.  And i'm not being optimistic, in fact i'm starting to think i'm lowballing the figures

Kinda like, what significant gain do you get for watching a football game? Or perhaps owning a house larger than a small apartment? Or perhaps even, what do you have to gain from having a TV, or books (since it wastes time), board games, or even the time the previous poster took to comment.

This is one of those "I insult you and run away" syndromes you find online. Kind of like when someone insults you on an IM and then blocks you. Real mature.

Although, it's funny now that I found that comment about mother

It's better than smoking. 

 Nintendo's safety valve was record profits last semester   Something like, near one billion dollars of profit?  Who needs a safety valve when that happens?  You should look at the three's financial reports to see who needs the safety valves and who does not.  Nintendo does not, and that's an understatement.

The reason Sony and MS game departments need safety valves from their parent corporations is because they're horrible at maintaining profit   Nintendo flat doesn't apply to that mess, so what's the point?

Of course sales will slow down after the holidays. All sales slow down after the holidays. I think we'll see Wii sales level out and stay relatively even after the end of the fiscal year. Likely somewhere around Q3 levels.

 I couldn't find the post, but somewhere on the forums here I took a look at the PS1 'age' earnings and teh development costs of the PS2, and then the PS3.

The PS1's earnings helped encourage the PS2, obviously.  However, the PS2 sapped up all of PS1's earnings but started to hit back to zero right from the get go.  It took a year or so to actually turn a profit again, but a number of years of sales generated a nice development cashflow for a future PS3. 

PS3, on the other hand, sapped the entire PS2's profit lifespan before it was even released, and even ran up a debt.  After an entire year, I think the numbers were something like a billion dollars still in the red, way far out from zero....  financially speaking, the PS2 was a better investment in the first 2 years than the PS3 looks to be in the next 3 (assuming they can break even and start to make up some of the debt generated).

(Debt, meaning, by profit of console/software terms, having spent more than you made)

After a year of PS2 sales, Sony's gaming was back to zero, and making stockpile again.

After a year of PS3 sales, Sony's gaming is well below zero still, a billion to make up STILL.

And that probably will take 2 years to get back to that zero.

Problem is, development costs for a PS4?  They need to start making money for the financial backings to even consider a PS4. 

Brawl, Mario Kart, and WiiFit are out early next year. The system will remain sold out. How much they sell will depend on how many they ship.

Melee and Double Dash were the two biggest Gamecube games, and WiiFit is probably going to catch on like WiiSports and WiiPlay.