Awesome, so you're looking at the sales of a casual game that is packed into 75% of hardware purchases (JP is 25% of Wii's sales) and comparing it to a game that was put on the shelves to compete with every other title?

And you say he's trying to make reality suit his view? Ha.

So now wii is not a casual console ? 

How about look at the 2 top sellers being as casual as you can get with them out selling the 2 next best sellers 3-1 ?

Whats thats not enought ?  out of the wii top ten best sellers 5 are very casual and they out sold the other 5 by 42.43 million to 19.43 million.

Did you miss nintendos E3 conferance ? blue ocean bud.

And whats so wrong with wii being a casual console ? thats where its great success has come from by taping into casual people.

Bad analogy.... that would be losing. A better analogy would be: Did the New York Giants really "win" this year?

Yes. 

The rumors of Sony's demise are greatly exaggerated. VGChartz data for console sales, 2007:

2007
Wii 16,367,357
PS2 9,066,240
X360 8,143,662
PS3 7,630,237

Market share by units: Sony 40.5%, Nintendo 39.7%, Microsoft 19.8%.

Unit sales for 2008 to date:
Wii 3,937,176
PS3 2,561,622
PS2 1,947,201
X360 1,878,235

Market share: Sony 43.7%, Nintendo 38.1%, Microsoft 18.2%.

Conclusion: we're down to a two-horse race.

"omg thats spinning"

rolls eyes.

I call it business but whatev. the people that think they ad Ps2 numbers to make themselves look better should take some business courses or something. Sony is talking about what they sell because that's their business. They aren't worried about how much the other guy sells they are just worried about making money.

Personally I don't really see it as spinning for Sony to talk about PS2 sales. I can assure you that if GC or XBox were selling then Nintendo/MS would certainly tell us about it. Not a huge spin in my eyes, but that's just me.

I don't like people on the forums adding the PS2, PS3 numbers together though because we are all focussed on a single gen here, not just the sales by each company. It's like saying that Sony still has most of the market share because of the PS2's success.

Sony need ps2 as it represents the bottom end of the market it's almost in a completly different market from the premium systems like Ps3 and X360 or Wii (well Wii is sort of halfway).
It's a simple strategy once PS3 manufacturing price has come down enough and sell price is similar to the 360 or Wii they wont need ps2 anymore.
And price will come down alot. All the high price of current gen is mainly recouping cost of development and new production facility - the actual parts and materials like plastic case, and individual components like blu laser or Cell etc will cost no more to make than old technology consoles in long term.

 Yea i don't see how you can spin it as some kind of victory or a step forward in any way.  This gen is a very large step backwards no matter how you put it for Sony.  Even if things go great from here on out, the damage has already been done.  3 billion dollars was lost, Sony has no chance to make that much money back.  Even if they were to do that, breaking even is still a failure.  When a company invests billions of dollars on something they expect huge returns.

 The loss of brand strength, exclusives, market share, money etc is all part of a failure. 

The question is only to what degree did they fail, that has yet to be answered.   

Clearly you've been become accustomed to other forums where a straw man argument goes unnoticed. So I'll start by rectifying that. You're the one who insists on pigeonholing the Wii as a "casual sytem", not only did I never refer to the Wii as casual but I never even implied it was a bad thing. What I did do was poke holes in some of the worst logic I've seen posted on these forums since crazzyman was around.

I do find it interesting that your entire post deals with attacking this straw man position that you attempted to thrust upon me. More interesting is probably your definition of casual. Lets look at the top 5 sellers on the Wii:

Wii Sports, Wii Play, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Party 8, and TLoZ:Twighlight Princess.

Clearly there are 3 casual titles, 1 platformer, and 1 Action Adventure. The system is casual leaning yes, but still there are plenty of titles that will sate the so called "hardcore gamer". Its pretty clear Nintendo is aiming to please a wide variety of gamers not just a casual few. So really what we have is a console that appeals to just about everyone, yet you seem to think that "casuals only" is the tune Nintendo is humming.

Those informed know this is just flat wrong, games like Disaster Day of Crisis, Okami, PES 2008, Monster Hunter, Monster Lab, Sky Crawlers, Donkey Kong, Kid Icarus, Alone in the Dark, Brothers in Arms, FF Fables Chocobos Dungeon, SW: The Force Unleashed, Ghostbusters, Mushroom Men, Sam & Max, Deadly Creatures, Tales of Symphonia, FF CC: Crystal Bearers, etc...are all aimed at core gamers. But at the same time we have all the casual games that you have in mind making it a very well rounded system...perhaps not everyone's flavor but far from "casual only".

PS - Are you going to bother defending your example or are you admitting that it was folly?

In terms of money loss, Sony has basically thrown away all the profits earned from the PS2 and part of the PS1. The PS3 has not only cost them numerous franchises and exclusives, but has set them so far back in terms of the gaming market that if it weren't for the few franchises they have left, they might as well be starting over from scratch.

Even if the PS3 was to emerge #1 this generation, it would take the remainder of its life as well as most of the PS4's to get back to where Sony's Gaming Division was before launching the PS3.

Sony fucked up, The PS3 was over engineered and unprepaired for developers while Blu-Ray was too expensive for the consumer, they know this now and are playing catch up while feverishly trying to handle damage control. Let's just hope this experience will make them a little wiser in their future endeavors.

Sony's best strategy now is not to plan on a PSP2 or PS4, but rather to focus on the PSP and PS3 as long term investments (two generaiton consoles). The PS3 is already the standard of what graphics will be next gen for home consoles and the PSP already the standard of what graphics will be on the DS' successor. By pushing graphics further or for that matter pushing successors to their current products, they only risk hurting themselves. If they could turn a long term console idea (like a console lasting two generations) that would give them a major advantage over the competitors when they launch their next consoles for the next gneeration because the PS3 and PSP will already have large user bases and a cheaper price tag.