I was just looking over hardware totals and realized the PS3 only has an install base of 20.78million in America. Now compare that with the PS2 at 56.12milion and the PS1 at 40.78million. 

Let's compare it to the Xbox which launched in late 2001 and got discontinued in late 2006. So that's about 5 years on the market.  The PS3 launched in late 2006 and it is now 2011 so that's about 5 years and counting.

Xbox - 16.34 million
PS3 - 20.78 million

Aren't these numbers dissapointing? The PS3 install base in America is barely ahead of the original Xbox which was considered a flop.

Yes

I don't know, I'm not US people and I'm nintendo fanboy, I had wii and ps3. But I spend a lot of time with ps3 than wii... Ironic huh?

thats an interesting analysis but the dif is the Xbox only sold 24m ww, and Xbox wasn't last place so it wasn't a failure in my book, and PS3 has sold more then double that of Xbox ww.

360 is a failure in that regard aswell in comparing it to PS2 sells.

PS3 failed to be the sells beast the PS1 and 2 was. well you can't win them all right lol!

lets look at the group of consoles that failed to sell 56m in 5 yrs in the US.

wait wouldn't that be every console made before PS2 including the PS1?

just thought i'd add an interesting take on it, but your right its a failure in the US compared to PS1 and 2.

how does Wii stack up to PS2 in its 5th?

Failure is too strong of a word. As far as overall install base, it is still the single largest regional install base for the PS3.

But it definitely should be considered a disappointment. To think otherwise is a river in Africa.

@darth tigris

River in africa ? Which one ?

You already made this thread
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=134879&page=1#

In and of itself? Nah. In comparison to the PS3, definitely.

I wouldn't consider the PS3 a failure, even compared to the PS2 and PSX. I'm sure Sony is disappointed by the sales considering they spent so much they will probably never break even with the PS3.  It's not even Sony's fault really. They did everything they did with the PS2, but this time it didn't work. The market changed and they didn't see it coming.

Duh! Yes. Compared to PS1 and PS2 (esp PS2) PS3 is a failure everywhere. But that's because PS1 and PS2 are the second best and best selling home consoles ever in the entire history of consoles.

Compared to all consoles ever launched by any console makers though PS3 is a success in terms of number of consoles sold (Average sales of all home consoles listed on VGC database is ~45 million). But it's still an open question as to whether Sony would have made a profit from this console generation. Given only a few consoles actually made losses for their manufacturers in terms of what's important to companies (profit) PS3 has not done well, except that longer term it has ensured PS4 has a reasonable chance at doing well and being profitable. So at least PS3 did well enough to prevent Sony from being forced to exit the game console business. However PS3 also ensured that Blu-ray won the format war vs HD-DVD, and that's rather hard to quantify in terms of direct benefit to Sony.

So the end result: PS3 has been successful in some respects, but it has also been a failure in other respects. An objective analysis would say you can't call PS3 either a complete failure or a complete success. So it all depends on what aspect of PS3 performance you want to emphasise, which generally is determined by you bias for or against PS3 / Sony.