because people are buying into the hype

at least that was the reason initially, people bought into the hype with nothing for the system show

but now people will buy the system due to it getting good games

Hype.. and brand..

btw.. you should change the title to Home console war.. becourse when it comes to handheld consoles.. sony is almost dead and competition have sold more than 5 times as much..

yeah but that's Sony mistake, something that doesn't have anything to do with people's perception of the brand.  When I go to the store to buy a console, I never take into consideration how much money they gain/loss per unit.  It's their job to make a console financially viable but at the same time, sells a lot of unit.  They did well selling the console but failed terribly in the financial point of view. 

Funny thing is, this thread is discussing sales, not revenue or profits. Also, it is worth pointing out that the Xbox brand has burned a lot more money than the PS3 ever could.

@OP

It's obvious that the PS4 is succeeding due to the failures of Nintendo and Microsoft more than any other factor. In a lot of places there is essentially zero competition for the PS4.

There is no console war.

Very simple. Nintendo makes consoles for their studios, MS makes consoles for their software, Sony makes consoles for the whole industry.

They are selling hype and promising things in E3 that are not accomplished later, but who cares as long they draw the attention

Several reasons:

1. Nintendos Wii U was a letdown in the eyes of many gamers, and the game droughts only worsened on that.

2. The gargantuan gaffe of Microsoft that is the Xbox ONE reveal at E3 2013 and subsequent milking from SONY at their presentation

3. The console's GPU power. Not so much a marketing point and more one hammered down from their fanbase - and when Xbox ONE titles had lower resolution in games due to this, they milked it to death over the internet. Which brings us to...

4. Very strong and vocal Fanbase. It helps that the Xbox brand is not as well seen in europe and basically dead in japan.

5. It's pricetag at release, being much cheaper than the Xbox ONE and not too much more expensive than a Wii U

Microsoft has by now however mostly recovered from it's gaffe and token the price point out of this equation into one of their selling points, and the Wii U also seems to be slowly recovering from it's abysmal start (but by far not enough to sell really well), so I think the future will be more balanced between the consoles as it is now.

Because sony always has

yet the ps3 is still selling while the wii isnt anymore. More playstation devices are being sold in this year than nintendo devices overall