What made the ps2 so popular was the fact it had a DVD PLAYER, and it had amazing titles, as well as its affordable price.

PS3 has a BLU-RAY PLAYER, and has amazing titles, but not an affordable price.

That is the difference.

This gen is far from over.

When the PS3 launched it was subject to a speculation bubble. Based entirely upon the precedent established by the previous consoles launch sales, and failure to meet demand. You can easily understand why someone would speculate in consoles. There is no actual risk involved. In fact I highly recommend console speculation totally regardless of how the PS3 performed. You buy it, take it home, put it in an online auction, and if you cannot sell it all you need do is return it to the retailer.

Those massive sales were based entirely on ego and fear on the part of well to do consumers. Who are less then phased by paying high prices simply, because its not bought on merit. The console was purchased as a status symbol. There was no hype, and there was only very soft demand. Sony could not even clear launch consoles from the market for over six months.

This is not going to start well or finish nicely...

The ps3 wont touch what the ps2 did

I agree with leo-J. PS3 does have amazing titles that I really want to play. But the price is just too much, even now.

There is a lot more to it than that ...

The PS2 was a system that was backwards compatible with the most popular system of all time at a time when the system was still amazingly popular, had a lot of the best games being released for it, and was failing in large numbers (in a large part because of how many systems had been released).

The PS2 sold well out of the gate even though it faced competition from the Dreamcast, which offered a better game library at a lower price and the graphics (at the time) were better on the Dreamcast (due to how difficult development was on the emotion engine).

By the time Microsoft and Nintendo launched their systems Sony was seeing steady stream of high quality releases because developers expected it to be dominant from the start, and it had enough of a lead time that it was seeing second generation releases while the other systems were launching. The lead time also translated into major manufacturing cost reductions which enabled them to "force" Microsoft to reduce the price of their more expensive hardware and remain in an unprofitable position for the entire generation, and their massive lead in sales ensured that Nintendo faced an uphill battle when trying to secure third party support.

In the current generation, a lot has changed over the past 36 months including consumer perceptions on what is the "Cool" product to own and developers expectations on what system will have the largest user base when they release their upcoming software. What was possible for Sony to achieve 36 months ago is not possible anymore ...

Spot on Leo... except most people in the world don't care about Blu-Ray, and Blu-Ray is not at all the kind of revolution that DVD did. Also, are you saying that the PS3's lineup of games right now is comparable to the PS2? :P