No, those so called popular franchises on the PS2, only sold 15 million tops, there were more than 90 million PS2's that didn't play those games, most of those gamers are shifting over to Wii or will in the future, remember most consoles are sold for less than $199, i'm afraid you have misjudged the market, PS3 and 360 will not reach 50 million as most have no interest in the games coming to those systems, most want games that we would consider shovelware

I highly doubt that the 15 millions that bought GTA or the 10 Millions that bought FinalFantasy or even those that liked Halo are the same persons, overall there are probably 50+million players or more that liked one franchise or another...

Secondly most people are comparing Wii sales to PS2 sales.

Try to compare XBox360 + PS3 to PS2+Xbox total and you will see that right now they are tracking roughly the same, by the end of the PS3 second year the total of both consoles this generation will be equal to the total of both the previous generation ( and at least 2008 doesn't start in a way that seem to indicate that either XBoX360 or PS3 will sell less than in 2007) after the same amount of time.

If you added up the top selling franchises on the PS2, and take the top seller for each of those, namely FFX, GT3, GTA-San Andreas, KH1, MGS2, DQS, you only get 50 million. That's only 50% of the userbase. Also, I bet maybe 25% of any of those gamers are the same people, meaning there's roughly only 30 million actual people.

I don't think 360+PS3 = PS2+Xbox. The Xbox360 had a slower first 52 (this one is for America, 360s "strongest" market) weeks in each region than the Xbox did. Also, the PS2 only had Japan the first 20 weeks or something, so using "All" to compare each console is a bit off. More specifically, the PS2 Japan actually beats PS3 Japan + America for a while. PS3 + 360 will not equal even the PS2 in the same time frame. That's why it's GOOD that we have the Wii, otherwise the consoles would have many issues, namely:

• Lower userbase compared to the PS2
• Higher costs compared to the PS2
• Longer build times for games
• With lower userbase, and higher costs, means less profits, or more loss
• More risk involved in games means companies start doing the familiar, ie, fewer new IPs
• Also newer, smaller, devs have a hard time developing for the consoles, resulting in fewer games in general
• Fewer IPs mean more rehashes of old games
• Fewer IPs mean a less diverse library of games
• Less diverse library means people who are not interested in those types of games that sell well, will not bother getting the systems
• Repeat
• Market shrinks
• Market crashes
• But at least the Wii wouldn't have ruined gaming!

We shall see if 360 and PS3 don't do the same thing the XBOX and GC did. I'm not hedging any bets on either of them pulling much more than 30 million lifetime, however; the market they're in hasn't changed in favor of such an occurrence. The most dedicated fans of those companies, and of the game series that will be appearing on them exclusively, will stick with those two consoles and possibly get a Wii as a "second console" (much like many GC and XBOX users did with the PS2). However, the rest who have little to no corporate or series loyalty will be following the usual route of picking the console that's most popular. And that would be the Wii.

To further back up my point, this is 2 years of PS2 sales from launch in Japan. This is 2 years of the 360 and PS3 from launch of the 360. This does not align launches, since in this case, total usebase after a given time is more important than saying how many it sold each year.

PS2 after two years (with only about 1.5 for NA and Others): 24.5 million

PS3+360 after two years (with only 1 year for PS3, and only 8 months for PS3 other): 20.5 million. It is only a 4 million difference, but since we're combining two systems, I think 4 million is quite a lot. Especially when you consider that the Wii has 20 million after only 14 months, though it had very close WW launches.

Edit: Forgot to add the links. 

maybe in sales, but not in marketshare.

The PS2 had weaker competition than the Wii does. This BY FAR the most competitive Console war.

 It's more elucidating to compare the XB or GC's first two years to the PS3 and 360's performance, as here and here.  For the most part, the 360 and PS3 only manage to track about 3 million above either system, and neither was particularly stellar in overall end performance (both ultimately fell a good 8 to 10 million short of the N64's 32 million).  Meanwhile, the PS3 and 360 only manage to keep up with the PS2 here thanks to the Japanese launch being a good 8 months or so before the US and European launches.  By the point the 360 line ends, the PS2 is a full 10 million units ahead of the 360.

 In short, the PS3 and 360... actually aren't doing very much better than the last generation's second and third place contenders.

it will beat ps2!!

 Even if it is 50 million of those, you've got them split across 2 consoles, meaning that neither gets over 40 million, and as Stever said, more than likely the number is far smaller, making it even less likely

Please -- when a poster puts in huge amounts of dead space, and you reply to him, DELETE THE DEAD SPACE! Thank you.