I will say that Gamecube had a great library:

SSBM
Mario Sunshine
MGS Twin Snakes
and the RE games are enough to make me get a GC - I saw one really cheap the other day too - might as well get it for some fun

So your last line of defense is "supposing there were no competitors and Sony was the only console manufacturer, then we could say the ps3 is doing good"?

/golfclap

Ah, if you think I'm an agenda pusher like you, that's a grave mistake. I call shit where I see it because my consoles are consumer products, not objects of affection. Since you ask, Nintendo is doing great but I dislike they are funding games I don't want to play. As for Microsoft, they are currently chugging along which is pretty much what they've done with the 360 since 2005 - I do think however most (almost everything) in the bazaar is overpriced, from movies to XBLA games and DLC.

I have seen the Genesis/Megadrive number put at 29M (Wired 2007: http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/multimedia/2007/05/gallery_game_history?slide=21).

Nevertheless, the Atari 2600 (30M) is also on the list of goals for the PS3 to beat.

Mike from Morgantown

There's far more to the numbers than just "PS2 gained X, PS3 lost Y".  There's plenty of factors you have to think about.

For example...

How much money was invested into engine technology for ps3 games?  Many of Sony's internal studios were bleeding money at the start of this generation, and didn't start pulling in a decent amount of revenue until their games finally began coming out.  Look at Geurrilla Games, who spent 4 years working on Killzone 2.  Or Sony London, who spent 2.5+ years working on Home, including massive network and load tests.  Now these services are bringing in a nice bit of revenue, and now that the initial tech is in place, it saves these developers a good bit of time when working on their next projects, allowing them to bring in more money faster.  Killzone 3 will probably be made in half the time it took for them to make Killzone 2, and would hopefully share similar commercial success.  And then there's Lair, which probably cost almost as much as Killzone 2 but absolutely bombed.  That's another 20+ million down the drain.

How much would money would've been made over the ps2-era had Sony not began selling PSPs at a loss in 2004-5?  Were PSPs stilll sold at a loss going into 2006?

Now that the PSP is picking up steam, and is looking to have a very strong year, will an increase in revenue help to offset losses incurred over the past two years?

Will the PSP Touch or w/e it'll be called be sold at a loss?  How big of a hardware revision is it really?

How much money was invested into these PSP Redesigns (the most significant of which seems to be right around the corner)?

How much money is invested into the ps3's firmware?  With the overhaul of the PS Store, the addition of the Video Store, and the soon to be Music Store?  How much profit have/will these latter two bring in?

How much have the expenses spent on the ps3's firmware helped out the psp?  Afterall, the PSP now has a store vnearly identical to the ps3's store, and I wouldn't be surprised if the new PSP had access to an even better store that included a movie/music store, much like the iPod/iPhone and iTunes.

Now that Sony is charging bandwidth fees for DLC from third party publishers, how much will that help offset costs of the PSN?

There are plenty of things you have to think about.  Where exactly did the losses come from, what's making a profit now, what will turn a profit in the future.

While what you're saying is true, it's also looking at it from one side only. There's simply too many pros/cons to give a fair idea of how much money will be made/lost.

And how much was invested in engine tech for the Ps2? Maybe it wasn't as much as for the Ps3, but why should the Ps3 give higher paybacks on their engines than what happened on the Ps2?

How much would the Ps2 have lost early on, had the Ps1 not kept selling hardware and software? It sold 300M software after the Ps2 was released. That's how much? A billion? 3 Billion? That should offset the PsP costs.

Case is, you can look at it from both sides.

You're right - there is too much to it to just say "Ps2 gained X and the Ps3 lost Y". There is so much more to it, that saying that might be the best way to do it, without using tons of time.

I distantly recall some posters predicting that the PS3 "would be lucky to do Gamecube numbers this gen" well over a year ago.

Crystal balls ftw!

Dallinor, wasn't that regarding Japan (at least most of the comments)?

Just shows how poor the Gamecube was really doesnt it? And how the PS3 isnt the doomed console many believe it to be

Oh, I imagine most of them were.

But there's always a few...

well done sony