There's only one thing you need to know: Sony set a goal of 6 million PS3s by the end of March. Even after cutting their 2006 goals back, and delaying the European launch, they held to that 6 million goal. It was thought the only way they would miss that goal was if they couldn't produce the units. Right now, supply is not an issue, and they've only sold 2 million.

Well, Sony (as always) stated shipped not sold figures so it is likely that they will make these numbers ... I remember many months ago Sony had announced that they had "shipped" 20 Million PSP systems soon after Nintendo announced they had sold 22 Million Nintendo DS systems ...

@ Darc Requiem

Yes it's impressive how the PSX took over a market previously dominated by Sega and Nintendo, but this didn't happen right away, this actually took plenty of time. Currently I view the PS3 as being in somewhat a similar position, first an impressive games library has to be build up and this seems to be happening faster than was the case for the original PSX. With unique games and functionalities Sony will have to persuade customers to spend those extra bucks, but the must have game projects have become huge to develop, requiring multi-million dollar investments and often span years of development time. Rome wasn't build in a day. Also note that when the PS2 was launched it was initially being outsold by the cheaper PSOne for the year. The same is currently happening with the PS3, for 2006 the much cheaper PS2 not only outsold the PS3, but the XBox 360 and Nintendo Wii as well.

Are you aware of how Sega and Nintendo both screwed up at (pretty-much) the exact same time which gave the Playstation the opportunity to take over the market? Sega took their success with the Genesis and released the unpopular Sega CD, quickly followed that with the unpopular Sega 32x which they then followed with the Saturn which sold for $400 ( $525 with inflation ) and had 0 launch games. Nintendo took their success with the SNES and Gameboy and decided to produce the (amazingly) unpopular Virtual Boy, then Nintendo started playing around with the idea of changing licencing terms to have less crappy games on their system (even the suggestion of which offended third-parties), then they let the Saturn and Playstation battle it out for 18 months before they released the N64 (a system which was powerful but underperformed because of low memory and dramatic bottlenecks).

Those really aren't relevant comparison numbers MikeB. As for my views on PS3 sales, I will direct you to here http://www.vgcharts.org/forum/thread.php?id=481

This where we disagree. I view the PS3 as being in the N64 of this generation. The arrogant market leader pushes their agenda forth despite what developers and consumers think. That was the N64 and that currently is the PS3. The fact that the PS2 outsells the 360 and PS3 doesn't bother given where each console is in its respective life cycle. In fact, the only reason I think that bullet point is brought up is because for months Sony fans would retort that the "360 can't even outsell the PS2, the PS3 will kill it." Sony has lost all of their leverage when it comes to the PS3. They underdelivered at launch at this had cost them a great deal in sales IMO. The PS3 hype machine was full bore before launch, but Sony lacked the units to capitalize on it. Gamers were running out and buying the PS3 based on some romanticized image of what they thought it would be. Now that its out and so far hasn't done anything to distance itself from the 360. All of that prelaunch hype has bite them in the rear. Third party developers making the PS3 their primary platform just doesn't make sense at the current time. The PS3 has two competitors that are not only ahead of the PS3 but they are actually building a bigger lead with each day.

I tend to agree with Darc. The PS3's a great machine and has good potential, but with the hype disappearing and the bad publicity, it's going to have to do some major persuading to get the kind of following that PSX did.

As far as vgcharts is concerned the WII has sold 3.79 mill in north america and japan while the PS3 has sold 2 million. I think that is pretty much very good for a system that is near 3 times the price of a wii. So I do not see horrible sales at all. Seriously, for an expensive system with almost no amazing titles( IMO) does it really seem that horrible in sales? At least the Wii had zelda. Imagine the numbers if the PS3 launched with MGS4 or FFXIII. After all this even knowing the success of the previous systems I did not expect the 360 to sell 25 mill off the bat (or even a percentage of it) so why do people automatically assume that the PS2 userbase will all rise up and purchase the system at once? I know MANY people who ARE going to purchase a PS3 but have their own reasons for not doing so right away. Whether it is money, HDTV's, Titles or just waiting for issues to be fixed the PS3 will sell and it is not going to die. The only people who are seriously claiming this have been focused a little bit to much on the fud. I personally believe that by the end of the year the PS3 will make it to the second spot , closing the Wii's gap to a minimum, if not selling the most out of all three consoles.

People didn't expect every Playstation fan to rush out and buy a PS3, but they do expect (if it was going to be as popular as the PS2) you would see a similar number of people rush out to get the PS3 as rushed out to get the PS2. When you compare the PS3 to the PS2's early performance (in particular in Japan) one word comes to mind, "ugly" ... This is even made worse when you look at the total ammount of Software/Hardware sold in 2000 and compare it to 2006's numbers; the market has seen strong growth and the PS3 is selling very poorly as compared to the PS2.

@ HappySqurriel

The N64 looked very promising with Mario64 as its launch title, sadly no game released after this for the console really came close to the fun I had with this game. For the first 20 months the console performed very well and actually performed better in North America than the PSX did the first 20 months of availability, even for its first 6 months the console also outperformed the PS2's first 6 months! I think Sony's strenght is that they together with their 3rd party developers are able to keep pumping out increasingly impressive games over a very long timespan. The soon to be released 'God of War 2' for the PS2 is IMO a good example of this. I think Sony rather than looking just at the initial console price, looked mainly at making sure their console is as futureproof as possible, even at this price and a lack of software which really harvests this potential, they already have 2 million PS3s sold to consumers and sold 4 million units to retail. This isn't going to be another 3DO, I think Sony is strong enough to weather through the expected (for me at least) startup problems and developers will be able to show off what the console is worth (unlike was the case with the 3DO).