The Japan numbers show three times the sales after the same amount of time.

Mainly because they're talking about in North America and don't actually remember what happened ...

Because of demand for the PS2 in Japan, North America and Europe following the North American and European launches Sony had a great deal of difficulty meeting demand for the PS2 which kept sales very limited unitl March 2001 (where they sold 600,000 units in North America in 1 month); after that they averaged nearly 500,000 per month ...

Ok, that makes sense. But we need to do a better job of correcting the facts when this fallacy is repeated.

It's an attempt to try to justify the PS3, and try to make it look like it's just like the last two, in order to pretend the sales are nothing to worry about. I'm not bashing the PS3, but I'm not going to excuse it either. It's selling at too high for the mainstream right now, and it's manufactured for even more. Katuragi overengineered the system, and it's already stumbling because of that.

why dont you comapre word wide, or all 3 JDM Euro NA

Dont forget people thinking the PS2 launched at almost the same price as the PS3, and the beleif that price cuts came quick and furious

A combination of wishful thinking, denial, and a desire to rewrite history in order to protect the system they hold dear.

I'm a Nintendo fan and I can say with all honesty that Nintendo 64 & Gamecube did NOT do what they were supposed to on the market—good systems or no. Because they made money they weren't business failures (which is most important) but marketwise they bombed in comparison to the competition.

And you must maintain a market to be able to be good on the business end because with each contest loss your sales base slowly declines. N64 sold more than the Gamecube. If Wii didn't do what it was supposed to do sure Nintendo may have made money but they would be in more and more dire straits with each coming generation due to dwindling market representation. They would only end up maintaining and not building upon. Eventually it wouldn't be worth it to continue in the business to maintain such small marketbases. Gamemaking is an expensive business unlike piemaking. You can get a stove, a few pie tins, pie ingredients and set up shop on a common table in your front yard to sell pies. Advertising is some cheap cardboard sign with a magic marker that you post on a road sign. The "R&D" doesn't require that much and the overhead can be made nonexistent. Not so in a high-tech fickle field like videogaming where profitmaking is extremely difficult (ask Microsoft and every other company who's tried to make it in this field).

Hiroshi Yamauchi said DS was Nintendo's last chance to get back to their rightful place. He said if it fails they may profit but it will sink them to hell, if it succeeds it will raise them to heaven. They are now in 7th (gen) heaven.

I love Nintendo as a company but the greatest selling consoles of all time were the Playstation 1 and the Playstation 2. There's no way I can rewrite history based on who I side with or support.

Rude awakenings and bubble bursts are gonna bring these types of folks back to reality soon enough. They'll learn in time.

John Lucas 

It wasn't a WW launch it came out in March 2000 in Japan and Novemebr 2000 US. The sales were limited by supply in both territories. The PS3 is a WW launch it has no more territories to bring up the numbers quick like the PS2 had and it is not limited by supply like the PS2. The PS2 shipped 10 Million in its first year FY march 00 to FY march 01.

Another thing to consider is that even if it was true that the PS2 started out slowly there is enough differences between the PS2 and PS3 launches which makes this far more problematic. When the PS2 launched its only established competition was the Dreamcast and it had a full year (18 months in Japan) before any other competition arrived; the PS3 launches against an established XBox 360 which appears to be perfoming at a reasonable level (in North America and Europe) and faces competition from the Wii which launched immediately following it.

 Plus the PS2's competition have very few things the PS2 couldn't do.

 The Dreamcast had nothing, except immediate online, but Sony embraced it fast enough that wasn't a problem.

 The GC had texture compression (which would matter if consumers and developers were actually the graphics whores think they are), faster loading (which the carts vs CDs matter proved wasn't that vital either), and better sound mixing, (which served more for saving disc space than actually getting better sound).

 The Xbox had texture compression (see above), better online (but still came out too late to overcome the PS2's lead), and the HDD (which mainly caused the Xbox to lose money, which is why all the systms this gen with HDDs cost over $300).