if all that mattered were first party Nintendo would have swept every generation since the NES without any competition. I think you would have be near brain dead to deny that the company with the largest quantity of quality first party games is Nintendo.

 you have to remember though, this is a different generation and even professional analysts are saying that third party isnt going to make as big of a difference as previous generations till they figure out how to use each console to their potential which I dont see this happening. The only third party that has would be Epic.

I have never seen an analyst say 3rd parties don't matter much. Not only that, but many of the best selling games have been 3rd party (GTA). I think whoever has the strongest 3rd party support is most likely to win. So far, it looks like that will be Nintendo.

I was encouraged by your statement that you would use "known facts" in your predictions, but then a lot of it turned out to be presumption with very little analysis of numbers. It seems like you have an expectation for the market to come into line with your personal opinions. Still, interesting read. Don't take my criticisms of your analysis personally.

ssj..the 21 week averages for Wii is 225,000 - that is even with less supply capability earlier in the year.  Capacity is increasing, Mario, Metroid, Brawl, Pokemon, Wii Health, Wii Music, Mario & Sonic, GH III, etc all have yet to come out, and we have not seen Nov-Dec sales when supply & demand will both be far greater than right now. 

If you ignore all of those things, and add the ~ 4.7 million Wii has sold in 2007 to the ~ 7.0 million Wii would sell at 225k/week for the rest of the year (31 more weeks), you arrive at ~ 11.7 million Wiis sold in 2007, in additon to the 3.19 million sold in 2006 - which would put you at 14.89 million Wii's sold from launch to Jan 1, 2008.

I think Wii will actually sell more like 340,000 for the next 31 weeks on average (10,540,000 total), in addition to the ~ 4.7 million Wii has sold already in 2007, bringing the 2007 total to 15.2 million, and the lifetime sales total to ~18.4 million by Jan 1, 2008 

PS3 will be mired in the under 4 million sold range until late July or early August barring a massive price drop or surprise hit released between now and then.  August to October will see stronger sales on big titles like Madden, GTA, Heavenly Sword, Lair - probably around 500-600k a month on average instead of the current 200-300k per month.  So say 5.5 million PS3s sold by October 31, 2007 since launch.  November, even at that price, can see 800k to 1.1 million sold rather easily, and December I think will be in the range of 1.5 to 2.25 million sold.  If everything goes disastrously over the holidays, I still think PS3 will be past 7.5 million, at best PS3 will be near 9 million.

360 will hit 10 million sold worldwide in mid June.  360 will be somewhere in the 10.5 to 11.5 million range come August, before the GTA, Halo, Bioshock, Blue Dragon, etc onslaugt in Aug & Sept.  The weekly averages will then jump from around 80-120k weekly worldwide, to the vicinity of 150k to 250k weekly worldwide/.  I'd put 360 at 11 million on Aug 1 - 11.7 million Sept 1, 12.8 million Oct 1, 13.6 million Nov 1, 14.8 million Dec 1, and 16 million by Jan 1 2008.  

The main thing to remember is that weekly averages worldwide have been about 225k Wii, 103k PS3, 97k 360 - with Wii never under 160k, with PS3 dropping since late March, and 360 always within 40k of it's average.

 well.. I think what they were meaning is the minor third party games.

Games like FF, MGS,  GTA, and those will always be important but games like Battlefield, GRAW, SC, and those wont make much of an impact this generation as they did last.

K, I could agree with that.  Still, there are some big name 3rd party things out there.  And there are always the unexpected 3rd party successes that can be so great they sell a system.  GTA3 is one of these.

 GTA3 wasnt really a surprise to me...GTA1 and GTA2 sold pretty decent and were fun for their time so when they took it to 3D I figured it would have been successful.. which it was. 

Paraphrasing someone else at this forum, that's the same thing as saying that it's not selling like hotcakes because of the $600 price...

This generation 3rd party games will play a much lesser role because there are like no 3rd party exclusives between 360 and the ps3 in the future...