That picture perfectly sums up my thought process as soon as I saw that graph. I like how they clearly labeled where the old data ended and the forecast began so you could tell exactly where they just made shit up.

Did you draw this yourself?

Rol deserves a biscuit after those two post

 Don't worry I sent his posting history to the nearest medical professional. He will be receiving this as a free Christmas gift shortly

I almost wish the graph prediction comes true. Then we would see Sony struggling to keep up with demand just as Nintendo is now. And we would see the world at large criticizing them for not doing it better/faster.

they got to be jokeing

The point of my post was to point out what all winning systems have in common, which is what Nighteyes was talking about. It wasn't a question of how a system made it on the winning road, just what winning systems have in common.

Yes, but there was a strong implication. Don't pretend you didn't mean it ;) You were pointing out the correlation between a large variety of games and winning consoles. Now in this post you're saying that a large variety of launch games helps make a winning console. Of course, there's a rather large difference in those two statements. Launch games are of course important. Is it the size and variety of launch games that helps propel a console forward? Or is it the popularity of one or two launch games? 

I did mention it wasn't an exact science, didn't I? The N64 vs PS1 was actually an incredibly interesting competition. There are so many factors in this one that it's impossible to narrow it down to one or two. By all accounts, the N64 should have won. Unfortunately, the launch lineup was simply too small. I think Japan rejected the N64 out of the gate and this was the major problem. It seems Japan wasn't interested in a 3D Mario, which was basically the entirity of N64s launch. Especially with FF7 following shortly on the heels of the N64's release (the PS1's killer app). In America, the N64 actually performed extremely well despite the tiny launch library, mainly on the back of Mario 64. It probably would have won had America been the entire world. But in Japan, the PS1 outperformed the N64 quite handily, and Japanese developers (an incredibly strong force) went with the PS1. Japan was a much more important market in those days.

How was it that Nintendo was able to pull off those strict contracts with third parties in the SNES era? If they did that now third parties would simply not publish for Nintendo consoles. So how come they managed it back then? Well it's simple, brand name. At the time, the Nintendo brand was at its strongest, and everyone wanted to publish for them. Nintendo simply leveraged their successful brand name to force publishers into exclusivity contracts.

Now how did the Wii win? I think this is more straightforward than the previous consoles, and I don't think size and variety of the gaming library had much to do with it at all. I think the main reasons why the Wii is winning is:

1) Wii Sports. The killer app that built up an amazing amount of hype for the console. Let's be perfectly honest, if it wasn't for Wii Sports, then the Wii wouldn't have anywhere near the amazing hype it does now. Mainstream press coverage plus Wii parties have sold so many consoles.

2) price. While the Wii is off to a phenominal start, there's no question that if the PS3 launched  without blu-ray and more modest specs at a $300 price point, it would have sold more consoles. How many more? Who knows. But if it had captured the hearts of the PS2 owners rather than alienating them, it wouldn't take much to get a large portion of them to switch. Unfortunately for Sony, they concentrated too much on competing with Microsoft in their territory, and made an expensive powerful FPS machine to try to beat them.

Of course, you can argue that it was the large variety of games that sold the Wii, and I have no real proof that this isn't the case, but I think if you take that variety and remove Wii Sports, then you end up with the Xbox 360 still handily outselling everything else.

Firstly, Third parties could have easily said "stuff you Nintendo" and moved their development to Sega, for example. Why did they choose Nintendo? Because they controlled the previous generation. In other words, their brand was stronger than Sega's.

The N64 was a similar situation to the SNES. It launched after the competition, they had the same braindead relationship with third parties, but it failed. The lack of Japanese developers was a huge problem. Had the N64 taken off like the Wii did in Japan, then developers would have followed it. But the launch titles simply weren't there. I agree with you that launch titles are important, but if Nintendo had have launched with (say) FF7 along with the other three games, the scenario could have been quite different. Mario 64 didn't click with the Japanese like it did in the US, which goes a large way to explaining how the N64 went so well in USA but flopped in Japan.

I'm sure the lack of launch games for the N64 was a major problem. But the success in America despite launching with only 3 games shows that there is more than the variety of games in the process. I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all (that's where the "third party development spiral of doom" comes in). But how many launch titles did the DS have?

The sudden shift upward in PS3 sales for 2008 compared to the other two consoles is somewhat hard to believe. 

However, the 2010 and 2011 projections compared to the 2009 projections could be true.   Not the actual numbers, mind you, but the trend of their sales.  As long as you factor in that the Wii2, X720 start selling 4Q 2010, lowering the Wii and X360 sold for that year, and the PS4 comes along a year later (as forecasted by the PS3 slope lessing for 2011).