The problem is that those things are merely excuses (no offense meant). Sony didn't launch the PS3 as they did expecting that its price, time-to-market would cause it to be 3rd for so long. They simply thought it could do better, and were wrong.

The Gamecube didn't lose billions of dollars. That's the biggest difference.

@NJ5

No offence taken :) Far from trying to find excuses for the undeniable mistakes Sony might have made in their evaluations. Aside a certain dislike for Microsoft because of their business practices in the OS field, I have no strong feelings towards brands, and am myself a PC+Wii+PS3 gamer. Just trying to put the numbers i find in the charts in a context.

@Fishy Joe

Sony as a whole is losing alot of money and went in the red for, how much? 1.1 billions I think?

But I'm pretty sure that's not the fault of the PS3 sales... it's still sold at a loss, even though it should become profitable against the 400$ price during 2009.

The point is that it's not a surprise: it's a calculated upfront loss, and I bet that they had a nice timechart since 4 years ago where the IBM engineers set milestones for the size reduction of the Cell over time and in general forecastings about price-saving measures because of production techniques advancement.

ps3 is tracking similar to gamecube everywhere outside of europe, but there is a huge difference in others, it has almost sold 2x the LTD of gamecube in europe already.

The Wii is tracking higher than the PS3 in all regions but Japan.

The PS3 if I remember correctly is tracking in a similar fashion to the 360 when it was in its early life. Last I checked it was tracking just above the original Xbox and Gamecube.

The PS3 isn't the flop that people seem to make it out to be. It is hard to deny though that its performance so far has left a lot to be desired and is less than what was expected of it.

The gaming division has taken over $3.5 billion in losses since the launch of the PS3. During that time, I assume the PS2 and to a much lesser degree the PSP was profitable, so the total losses were in excess of that $3.5 billion.

These losses were not anticipated. If you look at their estimates, they missed every year by significant amounts. The losses are far heavier than they ever estimated.

But the Ps3 will outsell the wii in a few months worldwide.

This. Again and again.

Here are some links to show this, all graphs are from launch to week 115 with the PS2, PS3, and GameCube:

Japan

America

Europe (the PS3 had a crazy launch window in Total Others, so it's better to just use Europe...)

For completeness sake, here are the same graphs with the PS2, PS3, and the Wii.

Japan

America

Europe

As you can see (if you looked at the graphs), Europe and the rest of Others is really helping the PS3 stay ahead of the GameCube.

The gamecube was a flop in both JP and the EU. NA was it's only moderately successful region.

4 millions units in Japan is not something I'd call a flop.  It was certainly not competitive with the PS2, but it made Nintendo plenty of money and was only ever outsold by 1 non-Nintendo, non-Sony system: Saturn.  Yeah, it's on the weak end of the spectrum, but of the more than 20 systems released in Japan only 9 outsold it.  Generally we call that mediocre here in reality land, and considering that it made money every step of the way I can very well guarentee you that you wish you could have a products as successful as that "flop."

Please, go gain some perspective.