40 million should definitely be reached. I expect somewhere around 45-50 million Lifetime.

End 2008: 19 million
End 2009: 29 million (enough big games to keep selling at current rate)
End 2010: 38 million (GT5, FFXIII)
End 2011: 44 million (Here's where the new consoles arrive)
Lifetime: 45-50 million

The PS3 would have to sell over 20 M to make 40 M by the end of this year. The 360 definitely will be over 40 M by the end of this year. Perhaps the 360 will have 43-46 M, while the PS3 ends the year at around 34-36 M. If the 360 outpaces the PS3 again this year it will stretch the gap to 10 M. The Wii would've doubled both by reaching 86 M consoles sold and in 2010 reaching 100 M by 2nd quarter.

I'm not saying Halo wasn't on the radar; but it wasn't an extablished franchise.  Halo 1 wasn't big like Halo 2 or 3; same with Gears of War, Uncharted, etc. etc.

What if Gears 3 came out in 2010 and Gears 4 came out in 2012 as a launch game with the new console?  I understand what you're saying about the trilogy thing, and there are a lot of good examples, but on the other hand it's not as bad as you think.  Star Wars doesn't count because the other movies are so separated from the originals.  They didn't keep making them.  IMO Batman went downhill after 2 movies, not 3.  I don't know as much about Splinter Cell or Tomb Raider. 

And there are many examples of franchises that don't go downhill after 3.  Super Mario World.  Resident Evil 4.  (OK, that's cheating, but still.)  Zelda (Link's Awakening).  Final Fantasy IV.  Mario Kart Wii.  (Some people would disagree -- wrong people.)

So you expect both PS3 and 360 to sell at a higher yearly rate than they ever did? Especially the 360 in its 4th year? Very unlikely. PS3 selling 20 million a year is also very unlikely. December was down from the year before.

I think 40M is a reasonable lifetime prediction for the PS3 if it keeps selling at the current level. This would assume that third party games keep coming, Sony can afford the occasional price drop, and the big first party games don't flop too badly.

There's a small chance that weak sales and the worsening financial situation are going to cause some sort of a disaster for Sony, but barring that the PS3 is probably going to end up somewhere around 40-60M.

Yeah, FFXIII twice.  Final Fantasy is huge in Japan, and believe me I'm not one to underestimate the franchise, but it's not going to singlehandedly put rocket boosters on the console for the whole generation.  We'll see an absolutely massive spike when the games hit, of course, and let's even suppose you get your 1-2 million.  That would be a mind-boggling success given the fact that it would be a couple of games singlehandedly increasing the user base in Japan by up to 50% or more.  If that happens, I guess you're right that it'll do better than the N64, and Saturn too, making it the most successful second place console ever in Japan not counting handhelds (the PSP). 

But please define "much" better because I still think you're being too optimistic even if your FFXIII dream comes true.  Which it won't:  Crisis Core sold 490k units week one and we can see a boost of 70k at most in the corresponding week of PSP sales.  The PSP-2000 was released there the very next week which screws things up somewhat but I think we can agree that the vast majority of people buying a console for a game will do it in the first week.  Anyway, so for every SEVEN people who bought the game, only ONE person bought the console in order to be able to play it.  Even if FFXIII sells consoles at TWICE the ratio, there aren't going to even be 4.5 million PS3s in Japan by the time it comes out -- and not every single PS3 owner is going to buy it.  Not even in Japan.

 As the price drops, the mass market will get their hands on the system. The 360 is jumping over peaks yearly and so will the PS3. I didn't say the PS3 will sell over 20 M. I stated that the PS3 would have to sell over 20 M to make 40 M by the end of the year ( I don't think they will though because I believe the PS3 will reach 40 M by 2010). The 360 will definitely be over 40 M by the end of this year. The 360 exceeded my prediction for the year of 2008 by 2 M. I stated that it would sell 25 M (When I made this prediction I made it knowing I would get flamed by PS3 fanboys). I stated that the PS3 would make 18 M and it exceeded it by a little over 1 million. I wasn't far off. Being that eventually in 2009 the PS3 will see a price cut, there will be a huge rise in sales. Because of the economy the west will respond with percentage increases from 2008 on both systems.

i don't think so Wii is dominating XB360 and Ps3

Listing upcoming releases as a reason why it will sell lots of consoles is not a good argument.  Last year it was, "Yeah, but MGS4, Resistance 2, LBP, etc. etc. are all coming out in 2008!!  How could it not catch up this year?!"

And it didn't.  Those titles didn't push consoles.  So now the Sony defense force is just pushing the "catch up" date ahead another year and listing more upcoming titles.  Just like last year and the year before.

I also love the arguments that the PS3 is actually outselling the Xbox 360 right now.  World wide, the 360 is destroying the PS3 every month lately.  The VGChartz sales gap between the two is widening rapidly again.  Somebody even mentioned that the PS3 was going to make "another comeback" in 2009.  When was the first comeback again?  The PS3 has been solidly in third place for the entire generation with no really strong trend showing that this will ever NOT be the case.  Not even massive title launches have been able to budge it. 

Anyone happen to see that Nielsen story the other day?  The PS2, original Xbox, and Xbox 360 are all being played more than the PS3.  The Xbox 360 is actually being played more than the Wii.  Apparently Nielsen tracks console use as well as TV viewing.  My verdict--the PS3 has been largely viewed as a BluRay player this generation and not so much a gaming machine.

      Yeah, but what is happening in the present has very little bearing upon the future.  What if Sony announced tomorrow that they were bringing out PS Sports and it was going to use the space available on the blu-ray to have 100 more times the number of Sports games that you can play in Wii Sports and they were going to use the graphics capabilities of the PS3 to have lifelike models of some of the most famous fitness and sports figures teach you how to do things and that the characters would be much better looking and that they were bringing out their own even more refined motion control remote to go with it?  That it was going to be the Gran Turismo of motion control sports titles?  It might blow Wii Sports out of the water?  Or what if like Coleco did to the Atari 2600, they came out with a device that let you play Wii games on the PS3?