Somehow, I see a picture in my mind of FishyJoe smiling right now.

You really don't think the success of past Nintendo products has had "any impact" on the sales outcome of the consoles released after them?

I would disagree with that, and point you to a concept called "brand loyalty". 

I'm not predicting the future here by any stretch, but I definitely don't think you can ignore the fact that there are roughly 120,000,000 PS2 owners out there.  Even if you subtract ALL the Wii, 360 and PS3 owners... There are still about 60,000,000 potential customers... and they all bought Sony at least once before.  I don't think you can discount that.  (I think the GTAIV sales comparisons will be interesting considering there may be some brand loyalty with that franchise previously being tied to the PlayStation brand...  We'll see.) 

And "everyone" does not do the same thing of supporting their last console.  That's kinda what this post is about; Sony's model of supporting the past consoles for as long as the public seems interested.  I mean, it is easy to understand why a company would not want to "compete" with it's new product.  Typically business do not support older products for very long.  Sony seems to have something working going against that trend.

Someone above questioned if Sony had planned it this way or not, I would point to the fact that God of War II came out after the release of the PS3... So I think they planned on it... maybe it is doing better than they predicted... But they never planned on dumping it completely. 

Name one single winning console in the last 20 years that was discontinued once its successor launched. There isn't one. The PS2/PS3 isn't anything special.

And brand loyalty is obviously overrated. Or am I mistaken, and the PSP sold 100 million to all the PS loyalists while the DS (which abandoned the popular Game Boy brand, mind you) sold far less? And of course the completely unknown Playstation 1 was outright flattened by the undefeated Nintendo brand with the N64.

Sales trends don't suddenly reverse themselves. There isn't some magical bank of PS2 customers that are going to decide they're all going to buy a PS3 one day. The first 1/3 of consoles have been sold and the last 2/3 of consoles will follow a simlar trend.

* Note to self - Never praise Sony over Nintendo no matter what or....* leaves topic

It wasn't as much a question of supporting or not supporting. The Gamecube and Xbox had lost momentum and developer support, so they were essentially dead. They wouldn't have been killed if they'd died first. The PS2 stayed alive because it kept selling, and new games are still being made.

That's why talking about a company's plan to support a console for 10 years is utter lunacy. The continued sales and developer support are what determines a consoles lifespan, not PR hype.

Huge lifespans are not an inherent feature of Sony consoles. They're an inherent feature of extremely succesful ones. 

Sqrl said: "Well by your logic since MS chooses not to introduce a handheld its their own fault. And the PS2 is just as much of a different market from the PS3 as the Wii is from the DS so that argument is bunk. Why not just do a real company wide comparison?"

No, The PS2 is in just as much of a different market from the PS3 as the Wii is from the Gamecube.
The one discrepancy in the OP is the fact that the Gamecube is no longer in production, and the PS2 is. But he acknowledged that fact in his post.

The fact that the DS is the only other console other than the wii in production by Nintendo does not make it comparable to the same situation that Sony has with its PS3/PS2 comparison.

A company wide comparison is one thing, and no-one is unaware of the results of such a comparison. BUT this thread is discussing current home console sales.

So deal with it.

 Hmm... Ok, I understand where you're coming from on the "winning" console thing.  But as you pointed out, one can make a bunch of distinctions about who really is competing with whom.  So as this all plays out, it may be hard for people to agree on what "winning" actually means.  (i.e. Who determines when a generation is over?)

We can disagree about how important brand loyalty is... I'll just point out that (and further my point about separating handhelds and consoles) Nintendo has a much better established brand in handhelds... and it goes way, way back.

 Do you really think the PS3 has only sold 1/3 of what will be its eventual total?  Wow... I'd take that bet.

If sales trends don't reverse themselves, then what do you make of the fact that the PS1 sold 100 million+ and the PS2 is at roughly 120million now?

I'm not sure how you do it on the new version of vgcharts... but if someone could post the sales charts of consoles with launches aligned for PS1, PS2 & PS3... It would be interesting to see if they are following similar trends.

Well if you look at all the gaming devices Nintendo has made and all the gaming devices Sony has made you can see that Nintendo is clearly dominant.

See what I did there?

I supposed I should've said, sales trends don't suddenly reverse themselves *within a generation*.

PS1 started off slowly everywhere but was never behind since it had nearly a 2-year headstart on the N64 and the Saturn just sucked.

PS2 took off like a rocket everywhere, caught DC easily and had a 15 million lead by the time XB and GC even launched.

Wii is following the PS2 curve very closely, but didn't have a headstart.

PS3 is tracking somewhat above GC/XB numbers but nowhere near PS2, though it's been doing a bit better since Xmas with the agressive pricing/bundling/advertising.

Can the PS2 not be thought of as a cheaper PS3 model? Much like the 360 arcade is to the Elite.

The only problem I see with the OP is that it doesn't show current PS3/360/Wii sales. As time goes by the Wii/Gamecube numbers will pass PS2/PS3 numbers.

But, at the moment Sony is selling more home consoles since the Wii/PS3 launch.