Much like the PS3 in Europe, the N64 had an amazing launch but soon sales died down.

The main problem the N64 faced was that it came to market way too late to really have much of an impact; after 18 months on the market the Playstation had secured a lot of exclusive support from key third party developers. While the N64 was in the typical first year drought the Playstation was releasing a major game every month and no matter what games Nintendo released they could not overcome the momentium Sony had built.

The Gamecube was pretty much in the exact same position as the N64 except it faced additional competition from the XBox and many of Nintendo's faithful left Nintendo when they believed they could never regain the support of third party developers.

Sony attempted to execute the exact same strategy on Nintendo by releasing the PSP 18 months before the Gameboy Advance was expected to see a replacement but this time Nintendo was not going to let themselves be trapped. The Nintendo DS was always sold as being a "Third Pillar" because they did not want to be seen as ending the generation early. By releasing at a similar time as the PSP, Nintendo was able to use its low cost hardware and inovative software to beat Sony ...

Sony has never come back, and has rarely faced competition on equal footing ... In this generation Sony is at a distinct disadvantage and it shows

Aligning the launches just shows that Nintendo 64 had a ton of momentum early on and then lost it. In the bigger picture, Playstation was doing nicely, N64 challenged it for a few months, but then Sony's big software momentum caused everything to reverse.

That's quite different from the situation we're in now where Playstation 3 has never had any advantage in software or hardware momentum, except maybe for the first few weeks after launch. This is why I believe Blu-ray is the only thing that could propel PS3 to a big lead over Wii or even 360: high-def movie playback is the only area where the competing systems haven't got much momentum. That said, I don't actually think consumers want high-def movies that badly, but I could be wrong.

We really should remove the "Align launches" checkbox. It's meaningless. It doesn't matter what happens when you align the launches, because that's not the real world situation. The real world situation was that the PS had too much of a lead, the N64 only outsold it for a 3 or 4 of weeks at launch and then the PS was outselling the N64. The reality was that PS had more many more users and was selling more units weekly than the N64. The N64 never looked like catching up. Now, uncheck that "Align Launches" button. It doesn't mean anything. Good boy.

I believe that America is a slightly different story, but I can't check due to lack of American data for th N64 vs PS

Right here goes...last generation:

The Dreamcast was released first and obviously was 1st, then the PS2 was released, so the PS2 was 2nd, then after a wee while, the PS2 became 1st and the Dreamcast then became 2nd.  Then the Xbox and Gamecube were released.  The Gamecube then became 3rd and the Xbox became 4th.  Then the Gamecube started selling well and became 2nd with the Dreamcast 3rd and Xbox still 4th.  Then the Dreamcast was effectively stopped and it then pushed right out and became 4th with the Xbox pushing up into 3rd.  Then the Xbox started selling better and took over the 2nd spot with the Gamecube dropping to 3rd and Dreamcast still in 4th with the PS2 still 1st.

So here goes:

Dreamcast - 1st > 2nd > 3rd > 4th

PS2 - 2nd > 1st

Xbox - 4th > 3rd > 2nd

Gamecube - 3rd > 2nd > 3rd

So you can see, that anything can happen.  And because consoles are released at different times, this doesn't hepl.  But looking at the Gamecube and Xbox, having been released in the same month, you can see that the Gamecube was more popular initially and then fell out a bit with the Xbox catching up and overtaking it.

Thie generation could go the same way.  You could look at the 360 as being like the Dreamcast and could look at the Wii as being like the PS2....who knows...it CAN happen. 

Your funny.....lol..................lol.........lol..you should be on a comedy show. Cause thats not going to happen. Microsoft's goal is to put Sony out of the console business and its working well. That statement was freaking hilarious!!!!!!!!!

Notice the emphasis on could.....I wasn't meaning it would happen...but it could....Sony could go out of business tomorrow as well.  So read it first before jumping to snap judgements

The PSP does have momentum...just not the other worldly momentum that the DS has.  Look in less than 3 years in Japan, 2.5 years in NA and just over 2 years in OR, the PSP has sold near 25m units.  The Xbox and Gamecube had sold far less than this amount worldwide...closer to 15m.  So in sales alone, the PSP is doing really well...just no where near enough compared to the DS.

I haven't made in judgements I specifically said that statement was hilarious and you should be on a comedy show because of it. Its funny is there a problem?!? Didn't think so, moving on.

I know it has and you point out that its nothing like the momentum of the DS. But you know most Nintendo fans would put it against the DS and say it lacks momentum. Thats what I was point out.

PS: You sig is really long you should either change the format into address format or make that pic you have smaller. Its rather annoying.