Well ,it could have some sense but have in count this . First ,Sony hasnt alienated from itself the third party support at all .Nearly all the occidental games will come out in the PS3 ,and all the japanese ones as well .As bad as you view Sony it gives total liberty to the developers and doesnt interfere in their work or force conditions on them (or censure their work ) as in the times of the Nintendo Seal of Quality .Plus they have lowered the royalties this time out . Second ,the format Nintendo selected was the wrong one because it was much more expensive and with a lot less capacity .BR on the other hand is about the same price as DVD(pennies per disc at most )and has the technology and storage advantage .Right now it is hard to ignore it is beating soundly the HD-DVD and will probably be the next HD movie format of the future . Third ,Nintendo launched the N64 a complete 2 years after Sony the Playstation and more than 2.5 years in Europe .Sony has suffered a delay and launched 1 year after the X360 ,1.3 in Europe (where the X360 hasnt gained a lot of ground ) ...the situation is more akin to the advantage the Dreamcast had when the PS2 arrived that the one the PS1 had over the N64 the prior generation .

True enough, Sony hasn't alienated third party support but the PS3 is being launched in a time where exclusive third party games are becomming quite rare. There is almost no third party property where I would be shocked to see a publisher announce that it was being released on both the XBox 360 and PS3, or that a spin off version was being released for the Wii. Would you be overly surprised to hear that Metal Gear Solid was being ported to the XBox 360, or that Final Fantasy XIII: Swords was being made for the Wii? Probably not ... This is a problem with Sony's strategy ... When GTA4 is released this year I have the choice of spending $400 on an XBox or $600 on a PS3 to play that game because I own neither system, does the PS3 offer enough benefit for me to choose to spend $200 extra to own it? Blu-Ray has its disadvantages; the main one being that the player is expensive, and the transfer rate is pretty low.

An issue with the N64 argument - Nintendo lost a decent bit of marketshare before the N64 came out. The SNES did not have this "dizzying" amount of succuess that you all talk about. It sold 49m units worldwide. Very impressive for the time, but the NES sold somewhere near 65m or more.It had a 15m unit reduction, and the N64 merely continued that trend. Most people are clamoring to revise their PS3 numbers. Where did you expect it to be at? 100-120m units for a system that's twice the price? Doubtful. Now do you expect it to be at sub-50m units for a system that'll atleast have a market in all 3 countries? One issue I find important to Sony: Futureproofing. I hate the idea of it, as it's made the PS3 into an over-bloated system with specs that aren't needed. However, Sony has said all along that the PS3 is designed to go into the next decade. What happens if the PS3 stays on market till AFTER the next-gen systems are out and its still even 2012 and there's no PS4? Sure, it'll do only mildly against competition, but with what the PS2 has proved, it's atleast possible if the company actually supports the product. The Xbox could of done somewhere near 27.5m units worldwide had MS not of killed support so quickly. Heck, it might of even got near 30m units. So because of this, Sony might pull a coup with having the system futureproofed. Not that I agree with it, as the archatecture on the PS3 is far too difficult for devs to work on, and will make them lose alot of stuff, but 4-5 years from now, maybe the PS3 will return as a console of choice to make games that are high budget? By then the PS3 will be cheap, and would garner decent sales then. Also, the PS3 has (thus far) about a 30% marketshare in Japan. If it held at this (although it should improve somewhere to 35 to even 40% at most), it'd mean somewhere near 10m or 12.5m units sold. Most analyists predict around a 30-35% marketshare in the US, so another 25m units there, then whatever Europe + other territories where Sony has typically done well in. Of course, most predictions are merely for marketshare vs. other gen compeditors, but as we've seen with the PS2, it's still garnering about 15-25% of worldwide next-gen shares if not more since the launch of the Wii and PS3. Im not a PS3 lover or fanboy, I hate them. However, I do see the merit in what they are trying to do. This is how I believe Sony sees it - 2006 - 1.5m units sold (horrible, everyone cries the world falls down) 2007 - 8.0m units sold (still pretty bad, world is falling down for Sony, Sony doomed total) 2008 - 11.0m units sold (price drops happen, Sony gets FFXIII out there, people start buying the PS3 as it's a little cheaper and worldwide) 2009 - 14.0m units sold (PS3 hits $350-$400 for higher end model, good Sony software. Starts improving marketshare vs. Wii and 360) 2010 - 15.0m units sold (PS3 hits its "stride" still under what the 360 and Wii has done, but reaches $250-$300 with people still buying it. Next-gen systems announced, Nintendo out with Wii 2 shortly. 2011 - 11.0m units sold (Next-Wii launches. Sony still doesn't have a solution to it, delays announcing next-gen succuessor. Bad sales maybe? says press) 2012 - 7.5m units sold (PS4 announced, or agreement with MS on a join project) 2013 - 5.0m units sold (PS4 launches, PS3 continues to sell well at $150 or so with decent bit of titles) 2014+ 5.0m units sold - Sony finally calls 8 year PS3 dead. Total sales: 78m units sold. Good vs. Wii/360? Yes. But it crawls to #1 after Wii + Wii 2 have already sold 90m units.

Yes, I agree, exactly there is IMHO Sonys biggest problem. Sony can't win a price war. The Xbox 360 is a financially much more healthy console. While Microsoft probably won't even make a big financial loss, when they lower their prices after the processor shrink, Sony on the other hand has still a long way to go to even reach the break even point. On the other hand it is rather cheap and easy to develop multi-plattform games (compared to the X-box PS-2 times) that you can demand fom Sony or Microsoft that they have to pay you for the games that you do not sell on the other plattform. Very expensive. And then the situation looks like I can get nearly identical games on these two plattforms for the same prices. I take the cheaper one. While the BluRay would probably get "Well, nice, but the discs costs more than 20 Euro per movie. I think I'll take the DVD for 7 Euro.".

I really like this. Nice. If the PS3 does hit the #1 spot "this gen" it will be a slow crawl, and due in significant part to Nintendo and perhaps Microsoft launching their next systems much sooner.

I just don't see that kind of run. The idea of an 8 year run seems to be based on the idea of the systems power. The notion that it's so powerfull that it will continue to push the graphics envelope for some time. But power isn't what keeps a console going, games is. Look at the current/last gen. The xbox was by far the most powerful system, but the PS2 had the market share and the games, which has kept it going along at a steady clip even today. For the PS3 to do those kind of numbers, it would have to keep the third party dev's interested in it specifically. But with the improved 360 sales and the Wiisplosion(I'm trademarking that), it seems unlikely. Edit: "7.5m units sold (PS4 announced, or agreement with MS on a join project)" - Wha!?

The PS2 is thus far has been out for 7 years as of March 4 2000, October 26, 2000 and November 24 in Europe. The PS2 didn't have fancy-dancy stuff in it as opposed to what the GC did or Xbox did. However, it had a dual core processor that even though was dumb (ala Saturn, ala PS3), it atleast future-proofed the system between that and the DVD to allow for alot of improvement. The secret to the PS2 doing 115m+ units shipped belongs to 2 reasons: 1. Strong Library (best library in the history of gaming, encompasing every genre, multi-platform game, and far too many exclusives) 2. Developer Commitment/Support from Sony and other developers (there are still titles coming out for the PS2 even into the PS3 lifespan) Those 2 reasons allowed it to exist for 7 years, and might see sales the rest of the year. The Xbox fell off the charts immediately when MS decided to ax the program. The GC has still sold (not much, but still sold) in the US because Nintendo released games like Zelda: TP for it, with other scraps. When a company decides to support a product for quite some time, eventually something will give. Developers will continue to support the PS3 as a multi-platform system like the Xbox was, and 360 is. However, Sony still has a few ever-dwindling major franchises that provide a worldwide advantage. Not only this, again, since the system is "future-proofed" (tm), 4 years from now developers will still use it as a multi-platform system to still create games on when Nintendo and MS are preparing to switch, which is why I believe it'll do well late into it's cycle. NO ONE would of thought that 7 years ago, the PS3 would beat out each and every next-gen system in the US in December and still sell nearly 6m units in the US alone. I am just stating the same will happen 7 years from now - just not with as much razzle-dazzle as the PS2 did in its early life. Again, look at what Sony did with the PS3: Large HD support for downloadable games and virtual content (imo, something this gen will have alot of) Cell prcoessor (right now, a piece of junk, and every dev has said they can't use it properly. However, it's still 6 cores @ 3.2ghz. It might take 4-5 years for devs to even make the cell more powerful than the X360's CPU, but it'll happen. Allowing the PS3 to overtake the 360 in terms of the graphics race) HDMI (HD stuff that I don't care about, but still, future-proofing) Blu-Ray (yes, slow, but large capacity. Not that important and costly, but 4-5 years from now, devs will find reason for this kind of space). Again, we see the 360 and PS3, and the 360 is whomping it graphically due to the same reasons the PS2's graphics weren't good: documentation software wasn't great, the dual-core PS2 was difficult to pull alot of power out for. However, they kept working with it till it worked great. Thats why we have Guitar Hero 2 and God of War doing great. They are still good and current enough to keep up with stuff on a 7 YEAR OLD system. I'm not saying devs will goto the PS3 as a lead console. However, in 4-5 years when devs prepare to switch to the Xbox 720 and Wii 2, the PS3 will still be there with enough power to possibly hold some water to both systems visually. This will allow devs to multi-plat for the 720, Wii 2 and then the PS3. Add in the past 4 years of software and a price under the Wii 2 and 720, and you have something that continues to sell well. The PS2 still has another year in it, and could sell another 10m units and wind up with 125m units. Really, the PS2 didn't out-do the PS1 much (about a 15% increase over a longer timeframe). But what it DID do is break the 6 year barrier every system has had (dying out in 6 years. Most systems loose any support that late, the PS2 hasn't).

No one doubts that the PS2 had (and will continue to have) a long life but this is the luxury of being the market leader ... Look at the GBA, there is nothing particularly special about it that would allow it to compete directly against the PSP or Nintendo DS yet it outsold the PSP in 2006 (in North America) with 3,742,000 units sold. The reason market leaders last so long is enough people own systems (after their replacement has been released) that developers are willing to continue supporting the platform; the Gamecube and XBox lost support so quickly because (at roughly 20 Million units sold) their usebase was too small to continue development ...

I don't understand why people think Nintendo will ax Wii after 5 years or less. Nintendo systems which created new market space= NES and GB, both with 7+ year runs on the top. Less healthy systems which don't create new market space= SNES, N64, GC, GBC, GBA. All with 5 year runs or less before their successor. That holds true of other companies too. This is not Microsoft, with their three-generation plan. This is Nintendo, and they plan to take the market by storm this generation, and then stay on top as long as they can. I don't think Wii2 in 4-5 years is part of that plan. The most successful system will, in turn, have the longest run. That's true of every generation.

I could see the Wii being replaced in Q4 of 2011 (after 5 years) if the Wii sales drop off in 2009/2010 because of lack of HD ... I personally don't expect that to happen but it is a possibility.