Ok. Here goes....*deep breath*
A lot of the time, people say, "I'm going to play my Playstation," because they are ACTUALLY going to play their Playstation. With over 120 million units sold with the PS2 alone and so many games to pick from, there is a good chance that they are being literal. Same with the Nintendo. At the time, pretty much if someone was going to play a game, it would be on a Nintendo system. So just the probability of what system they have will influence what statement they would make. Not to mention what particular friends you hang out with. What I find more interesting is what the "media" and "parents" would psychologically deem as a gaming device. This I believe is what you are actually referring to, because when a person actually owns a console, usually they know what it is called. It is the general and subconscious adoption of the word by parents and other people who are not familiar and the mass consensus that drives the media that seems to generate the more interesting scenarios.
I believe that people say "Playstation" when they are talking about games in general for two reasons. First, the name Playstation just sounds like a generic term for a place to play video games. So regardless if you know the history behind the name, to the uninformed, it still sounds like an accurate word to use. Second of all, Playstation is still fresh on people's minds from ruling the last 2 generations. The general mass public does not subconsciously latch onto ideas unless surrounded by them for years, as has been the Playstation=Games idea and the Nintendo=Games idea before it. so there is bound to be some Playstation=Games crossover while the Wii establishes its place.
Back in the mid 80s, people would say "I'm going to play Nintendo." But in that time it was much more severe since Nintendo brought to the plate something that hadn't been seen of its kind. It literally "became" video games as there was nothing much to compare it to. That's why many people insist that Nintendo created the video game industry even though there was Atari, PCs, and Pong before it. They were huge and being such were able to establish many of the core trends and expectations that we see today. If we look at the current situation, if Wii continues as it has been for another generation, we can expect people will be saying, "I'm going to play Wii." I'd be interested to see if that ever becomes the case, though this could be an exceptional case because of the massive divide between Wii and the HD consoles.
It is possible, with the divide, that Wii is considered so different from the old way of playing, because of the PR psychology of the implemented Blue Ocean strategy, that people will make a new separation and call the old way of playing "Playstation" and the new way of playing "Wii." Where the parents won't play "Playstation" (old style games) they always are up for some "Wii" (new style games). It would also be interesting if in some deep subconscious they even start to make a distinction between a casual game being a "Wii" game and what we term "hardcore" as Playstation games regardless of the system it is on. And with an even further stretch, from the media point of view, games that are violent and should be banned and affect our children are "Playstation" games (The games they don't play and don't understand thus being taboo) while games that get you off your couch and you play with your family and on holidays/at partires are Wii games (The games that even the casuals and nongamers can understand).
