My point wasn't off topic. It was within the confines of the topic while answering a different question. If anything, you strayed off topic first. The Playstation 1 did start off slowly since it didn't have much market significance at launch and was overshadowed by past generation consoles. It continued to build up momentum with games like Tekken and Final Fantasy until it became the definitive market leader. Let me give you an example. Let's say that the PS3 will end this generation with 6 million sold in Japan, and the Wii will end with 16 million. If the two were selling almost exactly the same from launch but both ended up with the userbases given at the end of the generation, would you say that the Wii started out, and I quote, "fast out of the gate?"

No, its never happened. The PS1 launched before the N64 - and the market was a little different then. Nintendo basically killed off the N64 - but the PS1 & N64 were both successful consoles.

Yes.

It started out by matching it's predecessor's tract in the generation.  That's fast to start off with.

Not really.

I think DS is the best example, everybody suspected their success compared to the PSP, but guess who had the bigger market share?

for some reason I got a feeling PS3 will.

The reason I say this is because Sony will end up selling them at 20$ a piece at the end of the life cycle just to beat Nintendo.

The SNES had a slow-ish start in NA.

learn the word guys:

Momentum

Kinda hard to say, People didn't start caring about system sales until this Generation. I never worried about how the NES or Sega Genesis was selling when I was a kid so I don't know.

Probably not after its behind the leading platform by 2.5 units and the other one has hit 50 million. However, at the height of the NES popularity in Japan, the PC Engine was released and it started outselling the NES in Japan on a weekly basis until the Genesis and SNES were released.