Well, I see your point on the DS, but it was also riding on the Gameboy line's success.

In consoles, that started out why 3rd parties jumped onto PS3, however, over time those exclusives went to 360 too as costs were too great and PS3 didn't sell to well due to launch prices.

Then when Wii became dominant the 3rd parties knew core would stay with PS360 due to tech as well as already produced 1st/2nd year games and since Wii never reached a 60% market share, it was better for them to stick with PS360.

Yes, I also agree that the costs involved with developing the tools to make HD games was already a sunk cost and another big reason to just stick with PS360. However, that would have been considered ok to leave IF Wii would have been able to get greater than 60%.

Agreed, this has probably been their plan all along imo.  It's also probably the reason we didn't see a Wii refresh, they're just waiting it out for the successor.

Nintendo's well aware of their '3rd party problem' and it's something Iwata's talked about at length.  I have no doubt they'll be making 3DS like effort to shore up upfront 3rd party support for Wii 2, and jump the next cycle by being both first to market and the assumed market leader.  They're going for the "PS2 plan" as it were...

No, Sony could NOT match a 360 price cut and remain profitable.  They only profit by very slim margins (no pun intended) on the hardware.  Not even 10%.  The 360 on the other hand has racked up a laundry list of cost savings over the last 2 years (die shrinks, cpu/gpu merge, mobo shrink, cooling shrink, psu shrink, casing shrink, etc) and has yet to cut the price.  They could take quite possibly take a $100 cut on hardware if they really wished and break even or take only a very mild loss.  If they did a more realistic $50 cut, the PS3 would again be losing anywhere between $30-40 on hardware again.

Also, the 360, even if it had no staggered launch of the slim, would be nowhere NEAR PS3 or below numbers.  It was settling at 40k above PS3 weekly numbers in Americas and another 25-30k above PS3 numbers in Others.  After the Arcade S effect wears off it will still settle far above the PS3 numbers.  With Reach coming in a few weeks, and then the holiday sales picking up, the 360 is going to be staying above PS3 numbers for the rest of the year save for a week or 2 following GT5 launch.

Btw, the new 360S is still struggling to meet demand.  They are cleared out of shelves within a day or two of restocking.  That's pretty clear that the deman and production for these units has not quite been met yet.

The Arcade 360S has yet to show up in Others numbers.  With over 124k in Americas last week following Arcade S launch, Others is likely to be about the same for next week.  The sales only dropped 9k in Americas to 115k this week and the Americas numbers will likely be around 105k range for the next 2 weeks.  Others will follow a similar decline if maybe slightly less.  So for the last 2 weeks of the month the 360 will sell easily another 400-500k units pushing this month's total to ~900k units again.  There is no way that it's going to drop by 400k units in just one month's time with Halo: Reach and the beginning of the holidays/Kinect hype effect taking place.

I'm sorry but I just don't see how you can be low balling it so much given all the evidence in front of you.

I think you really underestimate the core competency of Sony in miniturization and its ability to cut costs very quickly. Keep in mind that in 2006 the PS3 costs Sony over $800 to create, now it costs less than $300. Sony became profitable with the PS3 before it latest die shrinkage in February, 6 months later and I'm sure there is a decent margin.

360 has NO game launching that hasn't had a predecessor that is exactly like it. Reach will sell very well, but, it isn't going to grow demand more than the natural holiday season will. GT5 on the other hand is a much larger name with no predecessor really as I don't think prelude really counts as its merely a large demo. A good portion of GT fans woudl have skipped it or not purchased a $300-$400 PS3 for it alone.

How has 360S not shown up on Others numbers when it released there weeks ago? Also, I was just at three large retailers this last weekend and every console was in plentiful stock. So you'r hypothesis of 360S selling out can't be all that true across the board. I did not see any more older models of 360 though.

Guess we'll start to see whose right in a month.

Hrm... looking at numbers and seeing where I think things are going, I don't think it's going to be catastrophic. It's not going to be as good as last year, that's for sure, but I do think that Wii can move another 11 million by the end of the year. Remember that Nintendo seems have strong holidays, and gets some spurts seemingly out of nowhere. Here's what I'm seeing for all 3, though:

Wii: The peak year was 2008, though there was a nice resurgence for X-mas 2009. Unfortunately, Nintendo did not fully capitalize on this, and instead rode it out to today. I think 2010's numbers will be about equal to 2007's numbers when all is said and done. Nintendo's last shot at any resurgence would come from either doing several new colors (ala DS), or finding a way to make a Wii slim. And these will need to retail by June 2011. I can see Nintendo doing the colors... maybe... but unfortunately, for home consoles, Nintendo has always done any slimming way too late to be much more than a blip on the radar. (See: NES and SNES remakes.) Even if they do this, though, it's been in decline enough already to not be able to rehit the 2008 numbers. At best, with the new colors, 2011 may be about a million shy of 2009. Even after 2011, I think HD penetration will be high enough that numbers may go back to an even sharper decline than if they hadn't done new colors, but net sales will still be higher.

360: If MS had not done any intervention, 2008 would have been their peak year also. But they got their slim out at the perfect time. Sales had started their downturn, and they got the slim out just in time to reinvigorate sales, causing a new peak, which I think will be this year. Natal's launch I think will make 2011 about flat, almost actually creating a plateau effect. After 2011, sales will start to fall on a rather steep curve, as the system going into its 7th year will start to show some age.

PS3: Sony did their slim system with a different strategy: launch it at the peak to raise the peak more and extend it. Unfortunately, I do not think Sony's plan with plateauing sales with Move will work, and that will leave this year to be the PS3's peak. 2011 will only be down slightly from 2010, but it will start the turn. And I'm not sure how many more cards Sony has to play to stop the downward slope I see next starting next year. I do think the system has enough power and storage on the BR disk to get a gentler slope than the 360, though.

Idk, I didn't follow these lineups when DS/PSP launched, but with the handheld legacy of Nintendo and the Pokemon lineup alone and the typical demographic of handheld owners, I wouldn't have expected any different than DS leading the league.

A lot of my Wii/PS360 stuff is clearly my opinion, but I think its very logical when you look at the general dynamics of each market. You can't deny the clear immediate love by the core gaming community for the PS360 HD content. Wii, even when it was obvious it was outselling the combined totals of PS360, was heckled by this community.

The first two years of higher end core IPs were already destined for PS360 before 2006. Once those were out and the next wave of titles were about to be made, devs had a choice. Go for the clear leading console by then and not focus on cutting edge HD content or assume those that would primarily buy these specific titles would continue to support PS360 more than Wii. They took the latter as evidenced by where every single one of these IPs went.

On top of that they could continue to utilize the tools they have already developed and they figured with that continued push of HD content, the combined market share of PS360 would remain equivalent to Wii's.

My 60% line is because this is the point I believe any console would need to get to in order to easily win a far greater share of 3rd party push for their best IPs. I think this is probably demonstrated by the DS/PSP. I haven't looked, but I bet if you look at 3rd party support, DS started to clean house once it passed the 60% mark. Just an assumption, but it may be worth trying to determine if true.

Why would PS3 have its peak year at an entry price of $299?

Its not at Mass Market price yet

k k thnx

And yes, I'm sure we will see who's right.

Yep, I'd have to generally agree with you on all of this.

Interesting thing is, I've said for years 2012 will user in the next gen, but, with the PS360 getting the odd support for 'losing' systems and at least the PS3 not really hitting the sub $200 price yet, do you think its possible the Wii will get replaced before they do and that they will let it get a significant lead on the next gen? Its not too far out there considering PS2 launched first when PS1 was still healthy.

Well I do think it'll have a good holiday season ($200 with 2 games always looks pretty good) but yea sales have kinda slowed down.  But it is always important to remember what it slowed down from.  Perspective wise, the sales are still pretty damn good.  Compare it to things like the PS2 and it still is pretty awesome.  Also let's not disregard how strong the competition has been during the same time.  They just aren't laying down haha.  Has not been a similar situation to the last generation.  And of course software release comparisons for the year across all 3 really show where Wii has lacked which is why the holiday season should be better.

But yea Wii can only go down from where it is and right now, pace-wise, I'd say it is still doing good.  But strong competition, lack of year round big software releases, and a slow year in general has brought sales down.  But if Wii weren't up by so much, would say this was quite a tight race.  But hey makes it interesting right.