Who are you exactly? What degree to you hold  to make assertions about things you know to be true? You must be some first or second year college student studying statistics and market trends, but I think your classes have failed you bud.

This generation of consoles very closely resembles the 16-bit era. Looking at trends (examining only the two HD consoles against the SNES and the Gensis) the Genesis had the most steam and was steadily gaining in hardware sales due to popularity and their excellent software library at the time. The SNES was very far behind at this point and it wasn't until the halfway point of that generation that SNES really gained headway. If I remember correctly Donkey Kong Country was proclaimed as the systems savior and turning point. The point is the SNES was steadily making headway as the Gensis declined and eventually edged out the Genesis in sales. Need I mention there was a recession during the early period of this generation as well?

The PS3 is showing the same trend and there are many similarities. In the begining of the 16-bit war, the power of the SNES wasn't really necessary as in this era the PS3 is in the same boat. The Genesis was selling at a lower price point and had the edge in the games people wanted to play. As the SNES's power was exploited it became necessary, because possibilities opened up that were simply not available on the Genesis. The same is happening with the PS3...primarily with games that are showing off incredible physics...GOW III is a great example. Opportunities for new game idea's and grander schemes are a going to take over this market which is flooded with casual games and hardcore FPS'. The same paralell could be drawn between the flood of side scroller action games on the Gensis and SNES which gave way to the RPG toward the end of the SNES' life and continued to saturate the market on the PS1.

The prediction to follow is that the PS3 will not sell anywhere near as much as the PS1 or PS2, will probably sell around 70 million units and edge out the 360 ever so slightly. If you look at trends between the consoles week over week for the last several months, the gap between the two consoles are steadily closing. Here recently that gap has only been a little over 10k units.

Sony will not be able to take over the Nintendo's right to throne this generation, that much is known and there is few that will dispute that claim with the way the numbers looks right now. Nintendo will get third party support and has, the problem are most of those exclusives were total garbage. I don't expect a great deal of those exclusives to be too great in the future either, save for 1st party Nintendo games which have been their bread and butter since the N64.

The argument that FF should be used as a bench mark for Sony consoles sales has some validity to it. That game will sell millions and will drive up sales of the PS3 in Japan at least. It will probably generate a good deal in America while doing little for MS becuase trends are starting to show the market is pretty well saturated by the 360. Also consider, by and large, that most JRPG players are Sony loyal and are eagerly awaiting to see this game. If you want to place money on a Sony system savior, then I would say that GOW III is most likely to be the system Donkey Kong Country.

I won't sit here and arrogantly assert that I am right about all of this, there are many holes in my arguments and while there are a lot of similarties (as I have drawn) there are also many differences. SNES games always looked consistently better than there Genesis counterparts, this time around many PS3 ports of 360 games look terrible in comparison up until the last year or so. That is one of many.

I do however completely disagree with your analysis that Sony will abruptly die and I think you need to look at your numbers again. Sony might not be number one, but it isn't going anywhere either.

^^PS3 will sell 70 million units?

Welcome to VGChartz, kaneada! (I'm not about to get into this arguement.  Just wanted to welcome you here!)

I've lowered it to 50 to 70, but I still think it will pass the 360 for second place by the time all three next gen systems release.

Well then the PS3 better get a move on. -100k a week ww aint gonna cut it.

Don't you realize why it is game over?  Once a new gen starts, software support for the second and third place consoles of the previous gen is going to dry up.

So how exactly would the Xbox or GBA keep selling without software support?

Thanks! I've been around, but I haven't posted much. I have to admit the audience is pretty well educated here...makes the arguments more interesting.

The SNES/Genesis comparison is completely on target when compared to the PS3/360. Like the Genesis the 360 relies heavily on early adopters in the US. Like the SNES the PS3's greater power and universal appeal will become more apparent as the generation drags on.

I think of the 720 as the next Saturn. The next gen system that will release too early for consumers who are already weary of your product because of previously failed add ons.

sony have more studios than microsoft and nintendo combined, thats why.

though if sony decides to fully support PS4 only then is game over though sony support ps2 heavily until 2007 with god of war 2 hitting even ps3 was resurging.

You speak as if it's a law of nature, but it isn't so. At best you're projecting in the future mechanics that happened how many times? Two, three? And this time with different technologies, economic conditions etc.

When did in the past the second and third place console constitute almost a single development platform?

When did in the past the development cost of a game baloon to such proportions, and in the same way the time required to develop the middleware needed to make a profit?

The game is changing all the time. Looking back at NES and SNES, Genesis, N64 and PS1 is simplistic. How the development will work in 2012-2013 has still to be written. It could very well be that both MS and SONY pull a Wii and release upgraded versions of their machines, but similar enough that simultaneous development can happen for the two generations.