It was close in america and the Genesis won europe. The 4th generation was the closest outcome ever in videogame history.

Genesis was lost for sure because they didn't had the Japanese market with them.

Same with X360 who will never become number one and probably third because of the Japanese market.

 Your original point was that most people on this site started with N64 or PSone as their first console, which I said before is not true. I think console sales numbers have been made public before the internet became widely popular, mainly in videogame magazines back then

True it was in game magazine but how many gamers bought an game magazine then? 1/10? 

 I don't think people care for great looking soccer games, otherwise Fifa would have been dead by now and ISS would have taken over. The reason why most people still buy Fifa is because it has way more licenses (exclusive Fifa license) than PES which is dependent on the FifPro license which only covers the names of the players, not the club names and logos.

Konami is trying to get more licenses, but that's not that easy if you have to go against EA. Just look at their exclusive contract with the NFL which caused Take 2 to stop making NFL 2k games, because a football game without official license is financial suicide in the USA.

Bottom line: Fifa and other EA sports games sell a lot more because they have the official licenses of the respective sports and most gamers care more for that than for gameplay qualit

Fifa 06 had only 6 competitions the same like PES 06 had.

Because you remember lots of gamers that bought an Xbox because of the better graphics doesn't mean anything. Sales numbers are a fact and they show that most people were satisfied with PS2 graphics if they just get the games they want.

The Wii sales numbers show the same: most gamers are satisfied with slightly improved PS2 graphics if they just get the games they want to play for a reasonable price.

The only chance that people will buy a 360 or PS3 as secondary system is that those consoles deliver games that gamers really want, at a reasonable price. I don't say that graphics aren't important, I just say that most gamers care more for their money than for graphics.

Between PS2 and the others there was not a big difference and the most games were made on PS2 where i
was better playable on. Between the Wii and the two others there is a big difference.

 Publishers care for money in the first place. If they think they can't make a profitable game on the 360 or PS3 they won't make the game at all or they will make it multiplatform to get more sales (exclusive 3rd party games will be rare on 360, PS3).

The Wii is cheap to develop for, a fast growing userbase and a healthy attach rate. It won't take long until developers will not make anymore PS2 ports because the Wii userbase will be big enough to become a viable exclusive platform.

What will happen is that the Wii will get tons of exclusive 3rd party support while the 360, PS3, PC will get multiplatform games.

Well, you could say that the 360, PS3, PC combined have a bigger userbase than the Wii, so why make exclusive Wii games? Because the Wii is outselling 360 and PS3 combined easily on a worldwide basis and is the new hot item, just like the DS.

Of course it will still be profitable to make 360 games (not so sure about PS3), but publishers have to deliver certain genres to those gamers to make profits. What you see is that nearly all 3rd party games for the 360 are either FPS, sports or racing games.

The 360 will have strong support in the genres I mentioned above, the PS3 will soon be neglected by most 3rd parties. Development costs for PS3 games are high, userbase is small, attach rate is horrible. It just doesn't make sense for 3rd parties to support the PS3 if current sales trends are continuing.  

If publishers care about it they would published blue Dragon never on X360 but on PS3 or Wii and sold a lot more.  Also Level 5 who did not agree with MS just deleted one of his games to not publish it on MS console and lost millions. Epic games is complaining how MS works with their games and want to publish their content for free but MS doesn't want it...Strange because of the contens Epic makes a lot more money but they care of their games. FPS , sports and racing games are the most profitable genres and they have also a lot of other exclusives, Doa 4 fighting game, Kameo platform, Crackdown action.

Developpers get money because they make a game exclusive mostly more if they would publish it on  
more platforms. And MS and Sony have the money to do it and they would not do it in the first place if they make more profit of it..

The PSone, Sony's first console, was a new entry to the business, therefore an unproven platform. The headstart for sure helped it, if I remember right the PSone only had an 8-10m worldwide lead before the N64 launched in japan.

 I was talking about PS2. PS one was still selling a lot and still Sony launched PS2 a lot of time before GC.
Why would Nintendo not do it? 

You said Nintendo didn't have any competition when they were marketleader, you can't argue that the Genesis did well outside of japan and was a threat to Nintendo. 

Yes true Genesis did great outside Japan but in Japan it sucks that is why I call it no concurrention for Nintendo.

You are right, without the japanese market you cannot become #1 as the Genesis has proven, no matter how good you are doing elsewhere in the world. The only system that will be successful in japan in this generation is the Wii. A big indicator why the Wii will win this generation.

Euhm that is way to early to call it a victory the first year of PS and PS2 sucks to :(.

 Probably less than 10 %, pretty much still the same now. Most people don't read print magazines or check online reviews for games nor do they care for sales numbers. What's your point about people knowing sales numbers anyway?

I didn't care about the sales number but my post was about the life time of the nintendo consoles the most 
people did not now how long a console lived then. This days the most people know when a new console 
release even my nephew who is 5 years old was talking about "I want the 
revilitation" (Revolution but he could not pronounce it). 

What do you mean by 6 competitions?

You said that Fifa haves more licences than PES but FIFA 06 haves the same licences as the PES 6.

This big difference is exactly the reason why the Wii will get a lot of exclusives and why most publishers will start to ignore 360 and PS3 ports, unless those games are FPS, sports, racing.

Not if MS and Sony will pay developpers to make them and Sony haves many companies and for Sony it is not only about games it is also about Blu Ray. The MGS movie will be also exclusive for Blu Ray. So they hope people will buy an PS3 to watch the movie and even buy games on it.

Microsoft paid Mistwalker to make Blue Dragon for the 360, so it wasn't a financial risk for Mistwalker to make this game. Microsoft paid all the marketing costs for Epic's Gears of War, that's why the game only cost $10 million for Epic. MS paid a lot for marketing that's why they tried to charge money for the additional multiplayer maps of Gears, to get more money back from their investment. The other exclusives you are talking about are financed mostly or completely by Microsoft themselves.

Paying for exclusive 3rd party content is expensive and makes it hard for the console manufacturer to become profitable, see Microsoft. The better solution to get exclusive games is a huge userbase which makes it unnecessary for 3rd parties to port their games over to other platforms.

MS is getting a lot of money really especially with the content of GEOW. They have made profit it for sure and so will Sony with their extra content and for extra home content.

Sorry, I missunderstood that point. Sony probably saw little of a threat from Sega's Dreamcast and probably also thought that Nintendo would launch their successor to the N64 in 2000. They knew the headstart over Nintendo paid of before with the PSone, so they tried to pull off the same strategy again which worked well as we all know.

Nintendo won't start the next generation, because they will want to make as much money from the Wii as possible before introducing a new platform. You should also notice that the graphics race is over now. Increasing just the horsepower won't do it anymore for a new system to become marketleader. The new strategy should be to make the gaming experience better, not only the visuals.

So whoever wants to challenge Nintendo, better has some good, innovative ideas. And Nintendo themselves to

So if Sony did a headstart (also when their console still sold a lot more than N64) why would Nintendo not do it? True about the innovation part Wii did it X360 did it with Xbox live and Sony is doing it: Home, EYE OF JUDGEMENT, If sony can take an license of a new popular card game and release it on their eye of Judgement it even can be a new standard for card tournaments.
Sony is fighting two wars the generation first just game console war and the HD war (Blu Ray).
They are losing maybe money with their games at the moment but they are winning again money back with their Blu Ray. With that money they can make another games and attach more gamers.

Hehe love this discussions :).

I still have yet to see any competent financial analysis that shows the profit generation of blu-ray sales. Video games has been one of Sony's most profitable divisions. I haven't seen any hard data that clearly demonstrates blu-ray profit is worth potentially sacrificing 50% of the video game market.

PS2 sells over 118 million to 1 Januar 2008 sell 121million ;)