Discussion is welcome right? I just wanted to put out mu opinions on a couple things you said.

First, your theory an HD Wii may be coming out earlier than the normal generational gap. I don't think there is any reason to think that actually. I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility, but I've never subscribed to the constant arguements several people have said "HD will be the determinant in console purchases here, anytime now,....anytime now....I promise, eventually". Wii has been against two HD consoles the entire time. And plenty of us HD TV owners, still bought a Wii even though we had an HD TV first. I just don't personally think there is a reason to think a new version of Wii will come out very soon, simply because it's the least powerful console.

You are absolutely right that it's pretty staggering to look at the total sales of the PS1 and PS2. They are definitely king in home consoles. I think you are downplaying the Wii though, in saying it SHOULD pass Nintendo best historical efforts. The Wii has sold more at the 16 month mark than ANY console in history has, INCLUDING portable systems. I don't personally know, or have the most faith in it keeping up the sales rate. It would be amazing to keep it up. But....the Wii, very well could outsell both the PS1 and PS2 lifetime sales in it's lifetime.

Though, that doesn't take away from Sony having done amazing with the PS1 and PS2, or from them doing pretty good right now.

I will admit I should have added "in the home?"... to the title of my post. I honestly didn't realize how averse people here are to separating consoles and hand-helds. I mean, on the home page of vgchartz they even group them separately. Same with many of your sigs.

People normally wouldn't be, however if you are going to throw in a last generational console people will honestly expect you to throw in everything else still selling. To pick the winner of the last generation (which is clearly going to still sell by historical precedent) and then say 'LOOK, SONY BIG!' is cherry picking.

But all these accusations of cherry picking are pretty comical (and telling to your own bias'). When discussing consoles currently being sold, it would be cherry picking to leave out the unit that often comes in second (ahead of the PS3 and 360). The image of an ostrich with its head in the sand comes to mind. "The PS2 doesn't count anymore"... Really?! How can that be when it outsells the "upgraded" devices that you are comparing?

The PS2 doesn't count any more because it has no effect on the current console war, its from last generation and only still selling for replacements and extreme budget gamers, if the PS2 was still dominating entirely and selling the most software (like say Atari 2600>Atari 5200) then I could see your point, however this is merely following the historical trend of the winning console still selling after the end of the generation.

So, I see what is going on here... You guys want to limit the talk about "Who is doing best with ONLY their MOST RECENT console?"... That's totally fine, and fair. But pardon me for thinking we all knew the answer to that... You can see the home page here or, again, most of your sigs to see who is selling the most. Is that something that even needs discussion?

No, not really. But neither is a claim that Sony is still dominating when we can also quite clearly see that they are not by the PS3 numbers on the homepage.

But I would encourage you all to be a bit more open to accepting what the PS2 has done and continues to do. And perhaps be a bit more alert to Sony's not-so-secret strategy (i.e. 10 year blah, blah, blah) with their PS3. Counting the actual sales of consoles into homes WITHOUT ignoring a big purple elephant is far from irrelevant.

Where did the 10 year strategy come into this? In any case claiming that they will support the console for 10 years and it actually selling for ten years is a different story. Once a console has thoroughly won a generation the other consoles always have difficulty selling.

Sony has TWO players in the home console market right now. The other two companies have one. It is not YOU (an opinionated individual) who determines when a console becomes irrelevant... it is the market. Sure, you can make a website and pretend that one console no longer exists... or that "it already won" so there's no need to look at it. But THAT is cherry picking.

No its not, its looking at the current generation, a consoles success normally becomes irrelevant to the current market once its generation is over. Look at the past - the NES was still selling into this millenium, however it could hardly claim to be competing with the PS1.

What you all are doing is setting yourselves up so you can define "victory" by your own terms. And I'm not sure why it matters so much to many of you. From the responses here, these sales are being taken waaaay too seriously.

It is a sales site.

You want to define the PS2 as already having won, so you can ignore it. You want to define "next gen" as including the Wii against two very different devices (when we know that's arguable to many). And if/when the Wii's lifecycle is over, you want to call it as a win... even if the 360 (or more likely) the PS3 stretches past it in total sales by virtue of it being created with the intention of extending the typical gaming generation cycle.

No, the winner is counted by the end of all their lives. However to claim that the Wii is arguably last generation is bullshit, its arguably built on last generation hardware however it was clearly made and released this generation.

...but you may be setting yourself up for failure. You may have to end up contradicting yourselves. With all the money that Nintendo is making, it may make sense for them to come out with a "HD Wii"... There's no way they'd discontinue the current Wii. So, what do you do at that point? Stop counting Wii sales and put the HD Wii in 3rd place... or all by itself as an uncontested winner?

The difference is that an 'HD Wii' (as opposed to a 'Wii 2') is the same console, in the same way as the PS and the PS1 are counted as the same console yet the PS1 and PS2 are not. Or in the way an XB360:Arcade and a XB360:Elite are the same.

I posted this thread to see what some of you would say... Honestly, I thought the MS people might be the most offended... (they're the upstart... this is only their second try...They're improving, even if they're behind in getting into your living room). But I don't think a company's past performance in the market can be discounted. Looking at the total sales of the PS1 and PS2 compared to any other consoles are pretty staggering. I have NO IDEA if that type of success is anywhere near possible... I suppose if they continued to sell at this same rate for 9 more years, then yeah. And it does appear that the Wii SHOULD be able to surpass Nintendo's best historical effort.

It didn't really save Atari or Nintendo, merely selling well in the past does not imply selling well in the future. There is no chance in hell they will be selling this many in 9 years time when they will be competing with the end of next generation and possibly the start of the one after.

If Sony has really already sold 1/3 of its total consoles for the PS3, then I can tell you without hesitation that it (the PS3) will be considered a colossal failure. I definitely don't think that will be the case. Sony positioned the PS3 as a "long term investment". It may not do what the previous consoles did, but their strategy was conservative enough to assure some degree of success over time.

Conservative? They went out and built a $600 amazing gaming machine, their problem was not being conservative enough.

If you think that what Sony has learned with the PS1 and PS2 is all completely out the window and that it has no bearing on what will happen with the PS3, then I can see why any future success might surprise you. Maybe you'll be a blogger writing about the "comeback kid" because it is a good "story" and you just didn't see it coming. Maybe that will be because you made the decision to ignore how the PS2 continued in the face of newer and more capable consoles. Maybe you will forget how big of an issue pricing is... Maybe the move to HD by consumers will be surprising to you... Maybe you would have never expected that game to be THAT good... I don't know...

Thats a LOT of maybes.

Or maybe you're right... and the PS3 will top out at about 30 mil and Sony will dump it.

Just remember, the past is prologue...

But you can't tell the future from the past.