You talkin about me? Elaborate yourself. Trying to ridicule my thread is becoming boring. There are many people who are willing to discuss this topic. Don't derail my thread and cause annoyances. I suggest you don't come back here anymore and get some sleep. When you think you are ready to participate in the discussion you'll be welcome.

What?  This is just wrong.  Both consoles were pretty even, but the SNES ended up outselling the Genssis by somewhere between 8 and 12 million units.  I wouldn't say either console dominated.

Not to mention that the Genesis was non factor in Japan. The PC Engine was more popular in Japan.

I guess dominant wasn't the right term but the Genesis was clearly more popular globally in 1993. My point was that it doesn't really matter if a console is the market leader or not, if its successor is released two years earlier then that is going to drastically effect sales.

How long Sony waits to release the PS4 is immaterial, as sales patterns of the PS3 will be affected by its competition far more than the PS2 was. That the PS3 is "currently outselling its competitors" is also immaterial - the PS2 wasn't just outselling its competitors, it was outselling by a factor of something like 150% of the other two combined - probably more by the end of the generation. But more than that, momentum isn't about sales relative to its competitors. The PS3 isn't selling any more now than it was a year ago - indeed, it's selling less each month than it did a year earlier. The only reason that it's now outselling the Wii is that the Wii lost its momentum.

The capability of the hardware isn't what decides whether developers will support it. If it was, the Xbox would have gotten massive support last generation, and would have kept selling. What sold the PS2 beyond the release of the PS3 was actually what many call "casual gamers" (a misnomer, but let's not worry about that for this discussion). People who kept buying the PS2 did so because it was cheap, and they didn't feel the need to get the latest and greatest, but instead preferred cheap with a huge library of cheap games.

Meanwhile, Nintendo's forecast for the remainder of this financial year says that they're expecting to sell 10.5 million Wiis between April this year and March next year - basically, they're predicting the same as last financial year. If they do a price drop in the next couple of months (I predict early September), they can do it - the Wii is still relatively high in price given where in its life it is (it's still US$150). If they dropped it to $99, it would probably be able to sell 10.5 million just between now and the end of December... especially once you factor in Dragon Quest X in Japan.

EDIT: and I just realised I didn't establish the significance of that observation. If Nintendo meets its forecast, it'll have sold another 9.8 million Wii consoles, which would push it past the 105 million mark before the end of March 2013, and thus it would beat the PS3 to that mark.

@Aielyn: nintendo is predicting 10.5 Wii/Wii U sold this fiscal year. This number includes Wii U!

Your assertion that the PS3's sales trends will be more greatly effected by the competition than the PS2 is based on what? You made a point that the PS2 continued to sell because it was cheap while ignoring the fact that the new Slim PS3 might very well receive a significant price cut. No offense but Nintendo's sales forcast for the Wii is absolutely insane and I can not conceive how a human being can believe it to even be remotely possible. I usually don't speak in absolutes but the Wii is not going to sell 10.5 million for the 2013 fiscal year, it's impossible.

@sundin13

Thanks, I knew there was no way that Nintendo was expecting those kinds of Wii sales this year.

PS3 Super Slim, even at US$150, isn't going to sell exceptionally strongly. Especially when the Xbox 360 can be bought for similar or cheaper, and the Wii, which most of the people who haven't bought a gaming system yet won't think of as significantly different from the other two, is likely to be cheaper still.

The PS2 was already the market leader. The PS3 isn't. It doesn't have the install base the PS2 had at the equivalent time, it doesn't have the overwhelming brand recognition (in the last two generations, "Playstation" was synonymous with gaming for the general population - "Wii" how holds that distinction), and it doesn't have the huge game library. The PS3 will probably continue to be sold, and it might manage an extra, say, 10 million beyond the release of the PS4... but it won't do much more than that. It's certainly not looking at a PS2-like afterlife.

As for inclusion of Wii U in their Wii numbers... I hadn't noticed. I do think Nintendo could theoretically sell 10.5 million Wiis this financial year, but it requires a significant price cut. That it's only 10.5 million including Wii U suggests that they may actually not be planning on cutting the Wii price... which saddens me, because the system would do so well if its price was cut to $99 or lower.

Why again are people so convinced that PS3 is going to sell another 40 million in its lifetime?

A $150 Slim PS3 wouldn't sell exceptionally well yet a $100 Wii would? What on Earth are you basing all of this on? The PS3 has been far too expensive for far too long while the Wii has been affordable for years. Where is the logic?