All 3 are gaming systems and can be compared and they will be compared. All 3 play physical games or have at least 1 SKU that does. This whole nonsense started when Sony was not Nr. 1 anymore (Wii). Look for example at sports. 2004 Greece won 1:0 against Portugal and they became european champions. They where clearly the underdogs and most people cheered for Portugal and Italy. Did anybody came and said: You cannot compare Greece to te Rest because they play for a different audience or it was just luck?! Greece won, full Stop. Portugal had Luis Figo, Christiano Ronaldo, Pepe... Greece had a bunch of no name players. When a  relativley unknown polish soccer player from germany (Miroslav Klose 16) surpassed Ronaldo (15) in World Championship goals, nobody claimed that you cannot compare both just because the former is more famous. All 3 systems compete directly with each other. Who sells more wins, who sells less looses. It was always like that and it will always be. Only because people cannot accept their favourite system loosing, does not make the winning one a "non competitior". Thats what people need to learn.

Nintendo does not compete with either Sony or Microsoft.

You can in fact say the Wii beat the PS3 and 360 and the Switch beat the PS4 and XBO based on system sales, you can compare them like that, yes.

Now, the important part, they still never competed, the Wii or Switch success did not affect the other system sales, both still sold 170M+ units combined, those two on the other hand compete directly, and one being up means the other being down, like the Football example you gave, for one to win the other has to lose, that's not the case at all with Nintendo.

Nintendo platforms do not receive the modern new game releases, the vast majority of people will not consider either the Switch or another platform, they either want to have both or they only get Nintendo and indie/older games, basically excluding themselves from most new game releases. They can still only care for Nintendo games, usually happens to younger people or people getting systems as gifts, and they proceed to get another system (be either PC, Playstation or Xbox) later on if they plan to get access to most modern games.

Sony and Microsoft were directly competing for where do people want to play the new releases from the industry aside from a PC (PC does not canibalize console sales, at least not yet), they are into the Greece vs Portugal situation, actually even past that as Microsoft accepted they can not compete directly with Sony and are moving to a subscription based model and even porting their own exclusive games to Playstation. Maybe none will be truly into competition next gen.

Nintendo does not compete with either Sony or Microsoft.

You can in fact say the Wii beat the PS3 and 360 and the Switch beat the PS4 and XBO based on system sales, you can compare them like that, yes.

Now, the important part, they still never competed, the Wii or Switch success did not affect the other system sales, both still sold 170M+ units combined, those two on the other hand compete directly, and one being up means the other being down, like the Football example you gave, for one to win the other has to lose, that's not the case at all with Nintendo.

Nintendo platforms do not receive the modern new game releases, the vast majority of people will not consider either the Switch or another platform, they either want to have both or they only get Nintendo and indie/older games, basically excluding themselves from most new game releases. They can still only care for Nintendo games, usually happens to younger people or people getting systems as gifts, and they proceed to get another system (be either PC, Playstation or Xbox) later on if they plan to get access to most modern games.

Sony and Microsoft were directly competing for where do people want to play the new releases from the industry aside from a PC (PC does not canibalize console sales, at least not yet), they are into the Greece vs Portugal situation, actually even past that as Microsoft accepted they can not compete directly with Sony and are moving to a subscription based model and even porting their own exclusive games to Playstation. Maybe none will be truly into competition next gen.

Probably not true. PS3 shipments ended in May 2017 for Japan.

Other countries were March 2016, and October 2016.

June 2016 is not consistent with any source and isn't even a 10 year life cycle.

Sony's source themselves says

https://sonyinteractive.com/en/our-company/business-data-sales/

"More than 87.4 million
(As of March 31, 2017)"

So definitely not June 2016.

killer7 said:

(snip)

That comes from Jaymin Kessler's Twitter, a programmer at SIE Japan and a former Naughty Dog developer. Why would he make it up?

Of course, he might have been joking but never said as much.

A number that has never been officially announced is not official. And a random programmer at SIE cannot be taken seriously. Sony's official shipments for the PS3 where 87,4 million as of march 31, 2017. Discontinued may 30, 2017. 1 million in 2 months? Its the same fairytale as the allegedly 160 million PS2's from Ryan (wich is made up for "160 million+" just to fake up the number even higher).

 1 million in 2 months? Its the same fairytale ..

Keep in mind that number itself was an estimate ('more than 87.4 million') and shipped =/= produced units. There are demo units, warranty replacements, etc.

But you cannot count demo units shipped or even sold because they get sent back to the company. I worked in a gamesstore and i can confirm this. The original Xbox demostation was sent back in july 2007 at our store. If i include this number everywhere i can tell you there would be far more GBA's than 81,51 million, far more DS than 154,02 million (ok not the 160 wishfull dream of Ryan but quite a bit more). Warranty replacements are systems that REPLACE others. These are not counted. IF MS would count them (and finally give us an official number- it was 84 million as of june 2014), the number would be close to 90 million if not more. And we all know that the RRod rate was far higher on the Xbox 360 than the YLOD on the PS3. See what i mean?

First it's not over 1 million or 1 million, it's 700k units.

Second it's not 700k in 2 months, because Sony already stated "over 87.4M" So "over" may mean a lot of things.

I also worked in a videogame store, and you also should know, just like me, that PS3 had stock until 2018 (at least in my store - Europe market), which fully suits with Sony making 700k more to sell in the remaining of 2017, and even the holidays.

For the PSP, of course it's possible it sold 6M more in span of almost 3 years. Sony didn't wanted to confirm numbers back then individually because of the poor Vita performance. They choosed hiding Vita's failure sales over confirming beating GBA numbers.

PS2'one I agree it's fake image, it's stinks from miles away. Jim Ryan word was also not specific, probably rounded, anywhere between 158 and 162M can be said as just 160M.

PS4 I doubt they will go out with number 2M more, it can be something like 117.5M at most. Vita for sure won't get anything, as it is the biggest failure of their consoles.