Sorry this is somewhat long. Sony’s problem is that it is getting dangerously close to falling into the video game spiral of death. It’s somewhat less apparent at the moment since there are a string of good third party games coming out for the PS3. The reason as mentioned before is that these games were planned, budgeted, and developed over a year ago. Now game companies are looking a year into the future and they see a Wii that will have sold 15+ million (possibly approaching 20 million given the huge casual gamer vein Nintendo tapped) and cost half as much to develop for, an Xbox 360 that will have sold around 15 million and while expensive it’s something they already know the ins and outs of, and the PS3 which short of divine intervention will still be well short of 10 million sold, relatively new development-wise, and costing over twice as much as the Wii to develop for. The game companies are doing that math and understand that the PS3 is not worth supporting alone, or possibly altogether in some cases. The PS3 is going to have a hard time breaking out of this spiral since as someone mentioned “it’s the machine of the future”. Blu-ray offers no benefit unless you have an HDTV which 75% of Americans and 85% of Europeans do not (according to Sony bosses). Even with an HDTV the difference between Blu-ray and DVD are less than that between DVD and VHS. Also the PS2 was $300 not $600 (a price that better stand alone Blu-ray players will soon drop below). PS3 games themselves look little better than Wii games played on SDTV as some developers have noted. Sony has essentially lost the casual gamer who propelled the Playstation and the NES before it to #1. Sony fanboys will of course buy it regardless and that will be enough to sustain at least a Gamecube level existence. However, that is a sad place to be for a former market dominator as Nintendo discovered. Another question would be if Sony can even afford market dominance anymore. Sony is a big company ($60 billion revenue I believe) but the PS3’s losses are enormous even for a company of that size (almost 2 billion so far). They’ve put themselves in the kind of trouble American auto companies are in, they can sell more by lowering price but then they lose even more than before. Shareholders are profit fanboys and nothing else. They loved the PS2 gravy train but will not long tolerate massive losses of the scale the PS3 promises, especially since Sony only recently turned around its troubled money losing electronics division. Despite far greater company profits and lower video game losses even Microsoft is beginning to run into shareholder resistance over the price of the Xbox to company profits. Meanwhile, Nintendo is privately held and raking in more money than all other video game companies combined. Whatever happens this generation the only certainty next generation is that Nintendo will still be there.

Unless the PlayStation brand is abducted by aliens, Sony's fine. They may lose a step, but a lost step off 125+ million isn't a big deal. The big question isn't so much what happens to Sony but to what extent Microsoft and Nintendo can capitalize on it. Nintendo's sold well in its first few months. That we're all well aware of, as it gets beaten into people's heads day in and day out. I'm looking beyond that. While the theory that software development takes time holds water, I have two issues with the theory behind Nintendo support. First is that the system is so underpowered that it makes multiplatform support problematic at best. In the case of many major franchises, it's just simply not going to be technologically possible to release them on Wii, so the best case scenario for something like GTA or FF is a side story or last gen remake. So then we get into exclusives. The most compelling reason I can find for doing an exclusive for Wii is development cost. That's unlikely to win out over the pluses of doing exclusives for Sony or Microsoft, which even takes into account the aforementioned underpowered system issue, as if it's exclusive to PS3 or 360, a port to the other is dirt cheap should a decision be made to remove that exclusivity. I think EA's going about it the right way: release games that take advantage of Wii's capabilities and that you believe will sell only on Nintendo's system anyway.

Actually, they have to turn this around ASAP if they want to even stay in the race. If something significant hasn't happened by the end of the year, it's all over. (See albionus post about the circle of death.) The Playstation brand wasn't enough for the PSP and it's doing even less for the PS3. PS2 sold the most last generation because it had the most games, and it had the most games because it very quickly got the biggest installed base.You're not really looking beyond it, you're just trying to ignore clear market trends to somehow rationalize an outcome where the console war goes your way. The fact is that success causes success and once the snowball starts rolling it's extremely hard to stop. (Again see albionus post.) No system in history has had such a great start to then simply slow down and die. Not true. Most major franchises went to the PS2 last time because it had the largest installed base (despite both the GC and the Xbox being technologically superior) and they will go to Wii if Wii gets the largest installed base. Dragon Quest is the single largest third party franchise on the Japanese market and it went to the DS for crying out loud. Uh, this just means that non-exclusives fit well on PS3 & 360, not that exclusives do. Exclusives always work best on the largest installed base, and that is looking to be the Wii before long. (In fact, right now it's selling significantly more than PS3 & 360 combined.)

Just to point out. Sony has blistering 1st party, multiple triple AAA titles. But about Sony. I predict many people to be shaken to there core over the next couple of years with there unfounded and gleeful reporting of playstations demise.

Yes the sales doubled, for 1 week. Did it save PS3? Did it pass Wii? Sorry, but no it didn't Wii sales was a all time low but it still sold more than PS3. I don't think PS3 is a bad consol, the graphics is really beutiful BUT I do think that the price is to large.

I think something that you miss here is that it isn't zelda moving units in Japan, it is Wii sport. if that one has legs as the brain training games I don't see a problem at all :-/

Cool, I was referenced. Anyhow, the Wii’s lack of power could be seen as a benefit here. By being so different from the competition it forces games to be made specifically for it which is what it needs given the Wiimote. Had Nintendo gone with say a dual core 2.5 GHz processor with 256 MB of RAM (I recall reading that as a rumor in the Revolution days) then it would almost be certain that current spell of terrible PS2 ports with pathetic motion controls tacked on would quickly become terrible 360 ports with pathetic motion controls tacked on. Given Nintendo’s performance last go around there is no way they could have expected nor received greater 3rd party support this time. The price of the Wii would have also been over $300 putting Nintendo in direct competition with Sony and Microsoft and also locking out the casual/new gamer crowd that has powered the Wii’s sales. With Sony and Microsoft both taking the super-uber system route, Nintendo was given a golden opportunity to grab the casual gamer market before MS or Sony could react. With a large base, far lower development costs, and an incompatible system, 3rd party developers will have to make exclusives which means they may as well figure out how motion controls work. Nintendo had a year head start but the 3rd party people are catching on. Ignoring HD may be a cardinal sin to a hard-core gamer but it isn’t to the majority of the video game market that either doesn’t have HDTV or doesn’t care about the difference in graphics. System and game sales are a self feeding loop. The PS2 got a head start and rode the brand name and cheap DVD player to a large lead. That caused it to be the system that had multiple games for every possible genre and niche produced for it. That caused system sales to increase which caused more games to be made, and so forth. If the Wii (yes it is an if) continues to sell at its current rate it will be the system that gets all the niche and ok games. That's not to mention the Wii will be home to Dragon Quest X and FF XIV. I remember when Nintendo fanboys like myself used to make fun of the Playstation and its vast catalog of mediocre games while Nintendo has a smaller number of mostly excellent titles, but which one sold systems? If the PS3 doesn’t start picking up serious steam soon it will have a very hard time doing so later. I keep reading on these forums about Sony’s awesome 1st party games but looking at the best selling games of all time I see only 7 Sony titles, all either Gran Turismo or Crash Bandicoot, over 5 million despite it having back to back 100+ million systems. Nintendo has 9 despite selling ¼ as many systems the last two generations. Nintendo has proven it can survive with only 1st party AAA titles, it’s looking like we’re going to learn if Sony can do the same.

PS3 is easily beating the original, and the original is the second best selling system in history, well ahead of every system that launched better than it did. A strong start out of the gate may be nice, but it's no guarantee. PSP is outselling Nintendo's first portable. It may not be winning, but did anyone honestly expect it to? Sony didn't exactly rush out of the gates last time either. Definitely better than this time, but they got off to a slow start, though that was arguably more supply constrained. The reality is, though, that regardless that the $600 price tag, which is the biggest obstacle, won't be around forever, and Sony does have a lot of killer apps coming down the pike. N64 and Gamecube both had record setting launches... then laid down and died. Will Wii follow in their footsteps? Maybe. Maybe not. But assuming that it won't just on the basis of a couple months of good sales is just wrong. If I had this console war my way, I wouldn't be backing Sony. The inclusion of Blu-Ray was arrogant and careless. I do believe Microsoft has a better vision for the future of the industry (Nintendo's in its own little world, but that's okay because that's what we've come to expect from them over the years). But just because I think that Sony deserves to pay for that doesn't mean they will. Like it or not, they will get away with it. Anyone who thinks Wii will win the war is kidding themselves only. If Nintendo can get the system up to N64 levels while not losing, or perhaps even gaining, in terms of third party support, they're going to consider that very successful. The concept that we've got our third 100 million seller on our hands is laughable. The point isn't Zelda or Mario specifically... it's Nintendo's first party games. Nintendo needs more than just that. They don't have very much, and to make matters worse, most of their second parties bailed on them within the past 5 years. Rare, Left Field, Factor 5, and Silicon Knights all jumped ship to work for the enemy. The way I view the hardware design is that it's the biggest blessing and the biggest curse. It's a first party decision made for first party reasons of saving a buck, but I don't imagine developers embracing it. Sony is probably the most underestimated first party company in the industry, but their publishing history speaks for itself.

The PS3 is beating the original, but the original was from a company new to the video game industry that was going up against the titans of the industry, Sega and Nintendo. The original was new had to prove itself first. The PS3 shouldn’t have anything to prove and should thus be compared the PS2 since it is from the established industry leader with the largest fan base and so forth. It’s not an exact comparison since the PS2 launched in March in Japan but in approximately the first 4 months the PS2 sold 4,114k units in JP+NA compared with 1,989k for the PS3. Not only that but the PS2’s sales didn’t fall off the way the PS3’s have for almost 9 months (then it appears only because of the US/PALand launches). During the same time frame, except for the first week of the year, the PS3 greatest selling week (47k) is less than the PS2’s worst week (49k). The US isn’t as good an indicator due to having sales data by month but the PS2 didn’t sell below 262k for its first year. The PS3 despite being in ample supply already sold half that for a month. You can say the PS3 isn’t the worst selling system in history (it clearly isn’t) but comparing the successor to the PS1 & 2 to the Xbox or the first year of the PS1 is a sad place for both it and Sony to be. The PSP only this year sold more than the GBA in the US and then not by much. Japan is different but they switched over to the DS quicker and in a bigger way than the US did. I don’t find it surprising for the 2 year old system to outsell a 6 year old system. Even the Xbox 360 will outsell the PS2 at some point, probably this year. We’ll have to wait and see about the Wii of course, but it is outselling the PS2 from what can be garnered on this site (Europe’s figures being yearly is annoying), but the above sales + first Christmas in PALand = 4,784k for PS2 and 4,911k for the Wii. The GameCube and N64 were already lying down and dying at this point, despite both also widely available. May not be a 100 million seller but it’s on its way. You have to tap the casual market to hit 100 million and only the Wii has a price point capable of doing that this generation. MS may eventually, but the main flaw of the PS3 is that it cannot without financially ruining Sony. Yes the vaunted Sony 1st party, the one that can’t match Nintendo despite selling 4 times as many systems. If Nintendo couldn’t push systems based on 1st party Sony sure isn’t.

There's more to the equation than that, though. PS3's biggest competitor is PS2, while PS1 didn't cost 50% more than any previous system. On the contrary, it launched at 25% less than the only other alternative that was available at the time. PS3 did stutter for one month, but one month doesn't determine anything. The only time one month can have a serious impact is if it's December and you shift over 2 million units. Regardless, the point still stands. Sony built the PlayStation despite a lackluster launch into what was at the time by far the best selling console in history. My point isn't whether the PS3 launch is better or worse. My point is that it's better but that the PS launch being worse didn't matter. At all. Nintendo's first portable was Gameboy (and the other 100 things it morphed into). Gran Turismo's the strongest first party franchise next to Halo. SOCOM's just as big as anything Nintendo's got. Sony's the one that put Square on the map in the west, like Nintendo didn't do and some would argue could not have done, especially in Europe. God Of War looks to be the next big thing. Naughty Dog and Insomniac have proven very successful with Sony's publishing. People like to knock Sony because it's hip, but their games sell whether people wish to admit it or not.