Hope they learned their lesson already...

Makes sense.

Hold on ! So your saying... Sony gave life to the 360 or made it what it is !!??

How does a Corporation fuck themselves over by funding or making deals 3rd party? Microsoft didn't buy full games, they shelled out dollars to make their version of multiplatforms more appealing. They funded production. Devs next gen will respect Microsoft for that, especially if they are in trouble financially.

So you're saying  that Microsoft didn't have a good plan at all? Sony spoonfed them everything? Thats some strong loyalty you have their soldier.

Sony turned off it's customers which had 2 other choices, family friendly Wii, or hardcore focused 360. 360 took Sonys customers because Sony did everything they could to make people not get a Ps3. If Sony went into this gen a better way I'm sure the difference between MS and Sony would be smaller.

A large portion of gamers who had the PS2 last gen still don't have a next gen console. He's right about where alot of them split up to. However most forget that Nintendo broke the casual market that didn't exactly exist last gen. People who never thought of buying videogames at all.

For me the natural next step from PS2 is the 360 mainly because of the price.

@Zenfoldor: I'm sorry if I came off as harsh. I guess I was in a pissy mood. Maybe I shouldn't be on Vgchartz when that happens. Now to clown Smashchu.

So, to counter your first point, I can already tell that you're pretentious. Gurrr-ayt! Well it's going to be tough to continue arguing with you without the sides of my head throbbing with rage but I'll make an effort.

You pretty much ignored my points so that you could explain the obvious. I'm not too familiar with Clayton Christensen's work, but I'm sure that he mentioned PS3 and 360 sales in his work. I'm also sure that you're quoting him because he holds relevance and not to boost your aura of pseudo-intellectualism.Yes, the 360 and PS3 overshot the market. But also consider that even at a cheaper pricepoint, the 360 is still selling less than the Wii. So if people were just getting bored and not moving onto the next consoles, how do you explain the PS2's software sales? Casual-oriented titles (Fifa, Pro Evo, Madden, Guitar Hero, Singstar, etc.) all sell very well but most any other title will fail. It's simple. Many of the "core" gamers (those who purchased titles like Final Fantasy and GTA in bulk) have simply moved on. And this still doesn't explain how you think a large segment of gamers (casual gamers) could just vanish. Casual titles may be selling well on the PS2, but not nearly as well as their predecessors. So, not to put words in your mouth like you love to do for me, but are you saying that most PS2 gamers are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs and not buying any games? They...have...moved...on.

This next paragraph is where most of the pretentious stuff started, so it will be tough to respond to. You start off pretty well by stuffing words in my mouth, but still fail. Consider what I said earlier:

"And while the elderly may not have bought PS2s in large numbers, is there any evidence that they were a significant market in the first place? Plenty of women bought Playstation 2s as well. Maybe it wasn't as widespread as for the Wii, but the market was definitely there."

It's pretty bad when you're wrong on both accounts. NOT ONLY did I say that the elderly weren't a significant market (the exact opposite of what you claimed I said), but I also mentioned that women, while an existing market, weren't as widespread as they were on the Wii. Besides, who was calling Nintendo crazy? Was it like a scene in a B-movie where someone gets a crazy idea, and predictably, someone calls them crazy? Were there preachers on the sides of streets chastising Nintendo for their audacity? People may have criticized Nintendo for their decisions, but I don't think many people were actually calling them crazy.

That said, there have been games that appealed to women for quite a while. Assuming that you believe that all women play the same types of games, these things have been offered before. There have been dancing games, singing games, pet games, simulations (the Sims being especially popular) and a bunch of other things designed to capture that demographic. And like I said, there's still no evidence that the elderly are a considerable market for videogames. The Brain Training games have sold well, but they appeal to a variety of demographics (as it works for many of Nintendo's games).

You're arguing against points I never made. All I said is, again, that there's little evidence to show that the elderly are a significant market for videogames. If you believe that a couple news stories about Wiis being put in retirement homes shows otherwise, then fine. Obviously both the market for women and the elderly is larger under the Wii and DS, I never said otherwise. I'm just saying that the market for women wasn't insignificant before the Wii and DS and that the market for the elderly likely still is. This is you trying to bend my words, which you seem to be so fond of.

And now we come to the part that explains your earlier pretentious facepalm. I'm going to just assume that "internation" is a typo and that you meant international. Even when you subtract the PS2's 50 million sales in the PAL region, you're left with a userbase of about 70 million. So even without the PAL market, the PS2 would have sold more than the NES and SNES. The Wii is beating out the PS2 when you align launches because it has managed to attract many of the casual and hardcore gamers on the PS2 as well as attract more female and elderly gamers. I don't disagree with you about that, but you rejected the idea that the Wii had received many of the casual gamers from the PS2. Perhaps my points should clue you to what's going on.

I wonder if I should even argue with your last point consider it's the same stuff, but whatever. A little bit of interesting knowledge is that a family often consists of several different demographics (mother, father, daughter, son), so I don't know where this "family" demographic came from. And by the way, in case you forgot, Wii Sports is a bundled game. It wouldn't matter if everyone in the world hated it, it would still be the highest selling game of all time.

No. However, if the ps3 didn't lauch for $600 and stay so expensive for so long. It may actually be neck-in-neck with the wii right now because the wii for one won't have gotten as much attention. I know people who bought it simply because it was the cheapest way to go nex-gen. Some of them have since become bored though unfortunately.

If you had both the xbox and ps2 last gen, you'd realize that xbox was much better than the ps2 especially hardware-wise. However, sony won hands down because they'd essentially built a hardware legacy like nintendo seems to have built with it's games. This is also why the 3rd parties mosly flowed to ps2, giving it the superior library which a few would even argue against.