@soriku

Just like you said 40gb will not happen?

I havent read the rest of the thread so i don't know if this has been mentioned, but wasn't the PS3 released in Japan before the Wii in USA (and PS3 was 2 days before Wii in USA too) thus the Wii has done it.

I suppose though that the better way to think about it would be aligning launches (ie consoles that sold slowly for the first year or so but ended up the victor).

While it was briefly mentioned, NEC and Sega kicked off the fourth console generation early (in 1987 and 1988 respectively). Both consoles reached the US in 1989. Nintendo would not release the SNES until 1990 in Japan and 1991 in the US. And while the SNES quickly took the sales lead in Japan, it took years for Nintendo to catch up to the Genesis. So Nintendo has gone from third to first before.

And @ madskillz - The one thing the 360 does not have is the same sales curve. I don't think the system will reach the 22M the PS2 did after it's 2nd full holiday on store shelves. So while MS may have borrowed the PS2's play book, they didn't know that the industry isn't playing the same game this time around.

Can the PS3 go from last to first? It probably won't happen. It's going to be the Wii in front with the PS3 and 360 fighting for second place over the long haul.

The console war has far less to do with sales and far more to do with momentium. From day 1 the SNES sold more than the Genesis and it became obvious that it would eventually outsell it.

As for Final Fantasy ... Square choose to release Final Fantasy games to the Wonderswan Color rather than to the Gameboy Advance because (at the time) they had a very poor relationship with Nintendo and wanted to see the Gameboy Advance fail; eventually, after the wonderswan failed, Square ported those Final Fantasy games to the GBA.

Individual games (and a small set of games) really do not have that much of an impact on sales to actually determine the outcome of the console war. The XBox 360 had Bioshock and Halo 3 (along with the superior versions of Madden football, NHL hockey and NBA basketball) in a little over one month, both games are contenders for game of the year, and sales spiked yet the system's rate of sales will not be dramatically impacted by this; certainly 500,000 systems may have been sold because of these factors, but in order to maintain sales like this Microsoft would have to continue having a game of the year contender every month and the best version of most multiplatform games which probably won't happen.

Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo (along with the other big 2008 releases) will probably boost sales by 2 to 3 million for the PS3 but being that it is already 8 Million units behind and is losing ground every day these games will not make the difference.

latinum est mort

But what you are saying is right. 

I'm not arguing the point. I was calrifying the point he was making.

Such a drastic shift in momentum would be unprecedented. Thats what makes comments to that effect so irksome. The only thing worse then revisionist history is being oblivious to history. We base our entire lives on history our own specifically. Much of human reasoning is dependent on how events played out in the past. So when someone claims history is irrelevant. I wonder what event they are recollecting that makes them think that way. I wonder if anyone will appreciate the beauty of that last statement.

The reality is that while it is possible it is far from likely. Given what we know of how the industry works, and more specifically how all industries work. Parallels extend far beyond this particular industry, and cover hundreds if not thousands of years. This is why we study history. The point is that history should be paramount in any pontifications that posters make. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. The Nintendo fanboy of ten years ago greatly parallels the Sony fanboy of today. Learn from those mistakes.

A franchise can neither make or break a console. Win or lose a console a war. There was a time when another gamer might have said the same of Mario. Likewise even having the likes of a revolutionary Mario platformer such as Mario 64 was not enough to save the Nintendo 64. Under such logic that even never happened, and yet we know it did.

A interesting parallel might be in field of sports. A record might stand for a great length of time. However the longer it stands the more chances of it being broken occur. While the odds remain the same over time. Eventually the atypical occurrence will happen, and the record will be broken. Statistics are only a interesting way at look at the situation. Meanwhile the other consoles also hold valid statistics. Some statistics are going to have to break. These are not sacred facts. They are interesting analysis, and are not carved in stone. New statistics are being carved all the time.

For instance if Nintendo wins this generation. A new statistic will be born Nintendo wins most of the time. Before now Nintendo won half of the time. Before Sony came around Nintendo won all of the time. Statistics are broken all the time. Having a long string only means that your more likely to have it break now.

By the way doesn't every current generation console have a Final Fantasy of some sort. That would mean this record has to be broken now. Unless your saying only some games in the franchise count.