Your argument is that PS360 had a late boom. You basically said PS360 were different from all previous gens. So this gen isn't front loaded, last gen was a point out of the curve and this gen is normal. PS360 peak started when Wii lost market share quickly by its own limitations. Wii was the probably culprit for a unusual sales pattern during the gen.

really because I've seen a strangely large amount of people (even on here where people are normally more educated about things) predicting PS4 has peaked.  I of course think it will peak in year 3 or 4 with price cuts and increased software with older games at cheaper prices and software updates and all those great things.  Historical trends of Sony consoles also indicate they normally peak around then and stick around for awhile sales wise.  It all goes with the thinking that PS4 is just selling hype though and not wanting to give it any credit.  According to most that I've seen making this claim it's all about the Sony fanboys buying up the system and those will dry up soon.

As my response above said, the CPU doesn't make any, not even slight, difference. If Sony had put a PowerPC CPU in there and lied to everyone, it would still take some years for any dev notice that it is different. The compiler does the job.

And believe me, it isn't familiar hardware. Modern GPUs are crazy complex things. You don't become familiar with one that quick. It has several bottlenecks. This "x86 is easier BS" is something that a lot of people in foruns that never came close to see one line of code spread over there.

Of course we don't know for sure but we can make educated guesses. PS3 had such a late peak because of its initial high price tag that took a few years to come down. 360 peaked so late because Kinect ended up being a big casual hit that boosted sales later in its life.

PS4 launched at a reasonable price this time and while Xbox One launched high, it has fixed that problem and is now the same price as PS4. Both are likely to reach sub-$300 either this year or next year. Also unless VR headsets become huge casual hits sometime in the second half of the gen, then PS4/XB1 peak years are very likely to be 2015/2016.

Also u can look at PS3/360 sales at the end of their first year, each sold about 7-8 million, less than 10% of lifetime sales for each. At the end of the first year PS4 is at 18.5m and XB1 at 11m, lifetime sales would have to be 185m+ and 110m+ in order to not currently be more front loaded than PS3/360.

Yes, because when people say they are front loaded, they are comparing them to PS3/360. That's what myself, Rol and some other are saying, PS4/XB1 are likely to have a more standard sales curve and peak in the 2nd/3rd full year like most consoles in the past have done.

I am sorry but you are wrong here. Yes modern GPUs are complex, but you do realize that the GPUs in both the PS4/XB1 (and maybe the WiiU) are all based on amds GCN architecture. Which was introduced in 2011. Yes, there has been updates to the tech especially with HUMA as found in the PS4 and some R9 cards but basically anyone that's been making games since 2011 knows gcn. its familiar tech. 

you'll probably notice that its always nintendo fans... take from that what you will...

i'm working as programmer fulltime for 8 years now. maybe i just simplified my thoughts. the architectural proximity to pc will lead to less optimization because 1:1 ports are much easier. but you are right, that's my narrow sight on game development. maybe it's narrow because i only use compilers... and have no clue about game development, that's right.

PS3 used a pretty regular G70, already out. 360 came with a regular AMD GPU with some functionalities from their next line. Both regular hardware. But I'm not wrong when I say you aren't easily familiar with this kind of hardware. It is massively complex and all devs worked with this generation of GPUs on PCs, with abstraction layers like DX and no direct optimization. Is way different than sitting and working on its specific bottlenecks.

If your affirmation was correct, both PS3 and 360 should had been maximized from a GPU standpoint since the beginning (specially PS3). Even more, the OG XBox should be maximized from the get go, since it was even more like a PC than PS4 and X1 are.

That seems reasonable, if this is a regular 5 year gen we can expect a 3rd year peak. What I'm disagreeing is with the denomination "front loaded" as if it was something out of the normal, considering that all gens, except the 7th, took 5 years.

Edit: I don't recall correctly, but maybe the 2600 gen was longer too, but by different factor than today,