I know the first gears was a great system seller and I enjoyed the first one alot, but that reeled in many shooter fans back in 2006, then last year we had halo 3 which brought in the remaining on the fence shooter fans, so How is gears 2 going to make much of a difference?

I'm guessing it most likely won't affect the hardware sales too much, might see a 10-20k increase from the usual on opening week.

No more than Resistance 2. Which is to say, most likely not at all. Gears 2 is in general more of the same. It won't attract anymore people than the original did. If it was a different franchise, than it might attract some shooter fans that Halo and Gears could not get on board, but even then the effect would be very small.

What sort of effect do you think that Killzone 2 will have?

Sequels have this weird thing about selling more copies then the original. Will it sell systems? Probably a few.

Some... But mainly because you can get the Xbox 360 for about $100 less than the 2006 release date for the two important SKUs (Arcade/Premium)

Also the game is fairly noob friendly so it could make a compelling purchase for people and its going to be talked about a lot because its relatively one of the biggest releases this year.

But its going to be impossible to really see what specific effect its going to have as its released on the up and up portion of the ride to Christmas.

Well I think the price cut is what is moving them, not Gears of War 2. It is not really a noob friendly game. They have decreasesd the difficulty of the casual mode, so according to cliffy, you can get through the game without cover. But anyway, it is certainly not a casual game, and it certainly does not give of a noob vibe.

One thing for sure is it will not have a Halo 3 effect on sales, and I think there will only be a tiny boost, and I would think Resistance would give a larger boost to the PS3, if they advertise it well

Compared to other shooters being released, it seems like its going to be one of the easiest games to play this holiday. Its much slower paced and the controls were pretty good to use on the first one and by all accounts they are even better/easier this time around. Its not Halo level ease of use but I can't think of an easier game to pick up and play in this genre in the Holiday lineup.

any game that sells over 5 million is going to make all companies involved a lot of money.

I think Gears2 will sell a few systems and be a great reason for people to add the 360 to their christmas list - either way its not going to b bad for the 360 to have Gears2 in its games library.

Microsoft was smart for dropping the price of the 360 and releasing GOW 2 around the same time. This IMO is like a 1,2 punch in general. They often advertise more at the time of big releases and price cuts at the same time. I expect its release to be not quite as successful as Halo but could easily be because of the time of year its being released.