If you consider the brand of a console manufacturer as really being represented by the amount of software the platform manufacturer sold, the Gamecube didn't do that badly considering Nintendo published software for the Gamecube sold roughly as much as Sony published software for the PS3 has sold; with the primary difference being that the Gamecube was on the market for 5 years while the PS3 has already been on the market for 6.

People who bought the PS3 to play Call of Duty and watch Blu-Ray movies are less interested in the Sony brand than people who bought the Wii to play Mario Kart are interested in Nintendo's brand.

I really don't think a company with 178,000 employees worldwide is going to go under. No fanboy like talk in that.

This is the big picture and hard fact some people can't undertstand.  This is not the 90s anymore, when Sony was THE premier electronics brand.  Sony has lost the U.S. the largest most significant territory, and will never regain it again.  Its more than just Microsoft tripling their sales from last gen, or Sony losing half, its the BRAND name that lost power, which will be hard to fix.  Microsoft will only continue to grow; its an American beast company that won't go anywhere.  MS do not need Japan.  As far as Europe, they are always a little slower in trends, but they always catch up eventually...Sony may be their darling but Microsoft will soon take over EUR as well.

Its a dire situation for Sony.  To turn that company around, they might have to go back to their roots, even if it means selling their Playstation product/name to a giant like Apple, Google, etc.   Microsoft successfully trolled the shit out of Sony, (who came in the business #1 from the start/not used to losing), & is having a rough time taking punches from another, BIGGER heavyweight. We'll see if Sony can handle the competition in the coming future, but IMO its not looking good.

Greeks said "I really don't think a country with 11 million people is going to go under. No fanboy like talk in that.", and we spaniards say "I really don't think a country with 45 million people is going to go under. No fanboy like talk in that."

"I really didn't think a ship with over 2,000 passengers could go under......"

Yup, nothing is too big to fail

Despite losing a lot of money and going from first to third in one console gen, I'd say Sony are still very relevant.

lol...Sony expanded the market by leaps and bounds. Even the SNES never hit 60 million and it was in the lead. Sonys the reason the market took a 50 million+ console leap after the Sega vs Nintendo era which at best had 100 million console owners. Microsoft filled in Segas low gap in sales when Sony stretched their lead further, making the amount of owned consoles over 200 million+ people around the world. Sonys lowest was a number Nintendo or Microsoft could never hit without them. Competition is a great thing and Sony made their mistakes. Next gen, I assure you will be quite different. Nintendo stretched the casual userbase, while Sony and Microsoft increased the core market.

I don't think they can go back to PS2 glory ever again, but to become irrelevant - not likely. All they need to do is not loose money on next console, and their exclusives and dedication to gaming will more than keep them in the game. As for their exclusives not selling as much - well some of them maybe not as much as some other exclusives, but they certainly have a lot of them, in all sort of different genres and flavors. And IMO that is really big thing.

Going off topic here for a bit...what´s that about a part of Spain desiring to separate itself from the rest of the country?