I think you may have missed the point of his post.  If you align launches, as the OP did, the Wii has sold 54.2% of all current gen consoles sold within three years of their RESPECTIVE launches.

The stat you provided i.e. the numbers on the front page includes ~3 years of Wii and PS3 sales and ~4 years of 360 sales.

How many people here are aware that product life cycles are bell shaped curves?? And if you have Curve A and Curve B, then you shift curve A to the left one year, it gives that curve a significant advantage in terms of total sales for a large period of time even if Curve B is overall a greater curve. Right now the 360 has that significant advantage, but the PS3 has statistics that suggest it has a larger bell shaped curve for the PS3 which indicates at some point the PS3 will outsell the 360. Does everything work out in the real world like it does in theory? No. But if I was an educated betting man, I would be betting that the PS3 would pass the 360.

If you look at the sales numbers you may not recognize the bell shape but that is because of the seasonal sales fluctuations over the course of a given year. But if you go year by year sales the bell shape will reveal itself.

True but if last months sales are an indication that gap will be closing shortly. I put an ad on craigslist offering to trade my Wii for a PS3 and only got a single respose from one guy who asked if I was on drugs.

See, i told you garnett was a good guy.

That's because the worth of the PS3 is more than that of the Wii. There is a $100 difference you know. If you notice on Craigslist, people are asking to trade PS3s and 360s back and forth all the time.

I am fully aware of the bell shape you are talking about. I just believe that it applies more to each generation than to each console. Especially since there are so many games that are on both platforms, and both platforms are so similar in who they are targeting. The PS3 will feel fresh as long as the xbox feels fresh, given that they have a similar userbase.

If you align launches you also miss a lot of date specific events. Like economic factors, game releases, pricewars, public attitudes, marketing drives, next console generation etc. All of which have huge impacts on sales.

So by discounting these factors you lose a lot of value to any analysis of console sales, and you will be much less accurate.

garnett is right everybody else is wrong, how are suppose to play your 199$ xbox without the wifi adaptor (100$) the HDD (120$) and the Blu-Ray drive 200$?

Thanks for clarifying, surprised he missed the point. I guess it wasn't written clearly, since I was just mirroring what the OP said.

Basically, if one uses the aligned launches to declare that the PS3 will outsell the 360, they must also acknowledge that the Wii will outsell the HD consoles. Sucks, doesn't it?

Someone said "if last month's sales are an indication," but that's a weak argument. The PS3 had its biggest price cut (25% decrease) on top of a hardware revision last month, of course it's selling strong now. It isn't going to stay this way forever (remember last year?).

Of course there are other factors to be considered and they do have effects on the different consoles and the life cycles but external factors are pretty even and consistent for the different consoles and the internal factors(if given an advantage or disadvantage) would be rather constant for the lifespan of a single generation.

For example the factor of the economy is important and it currently makes a lot of people price sensitive. However, the economy doesn't change over night and the poor economy looks to persist throughout this generation's life cycle so it would lead one to believe that the trends of the past years will continue and not be altered by the economy. The price advantage that the 360/Wii have had look to continue, however as the price gap is closed the advantage looks like it would be reduced. But of course I don't think you will ever see the PS3 having a price advantage over anyone so you would assume this advantage over the course of the generation would persist for the 360/Wii.

Internal factors like the Video game libraries also have a great advantage for given consoles but generally over the course of a generation they stay consistent. For example the GTA series and FF series greatly helped out the playstation brand in previous generations and that advantage was maintained for that whole generation. Come this generation, they both have gone multiplat and have taken away that advantage, however the PS3's success(relative success) early did not depend on that exclusivity of those games so you can assume it's effects this generation will be maintained. As far as advantages for first party exclusives you can only assume that those factors will stay consistent.

Most of the internal factor changes happen between console life cycles that's why the PS2 and the Game Cube's success(again relative success) is not very indicative for the success of the next generations consoles. However once a generation starts the trends start to reveal themselves and the external/internal factors start to become stable.

I don't want to dismiss the idea that external/internal factors do play a part and can influence sales over a given period. But I do feel that by this point into the generation it would be rather surprising if something did come along and drastically change the landscape of the console wars and alter the trends that have been revealing themselves for 3 years now. It is possible though.

You do bring up an interesting point about it only applying to a generation and not a specific console. I only find it interesting because I don't remember there being such a similarly featured set of consoles as the PS3 and XBOX360 since maybe the Genesis/Super Nintendo. If we do look at the past it does not apply though, the PS/N64/Saturn consoles started and declined at significantly different time periods and at different rates. The PS's life cycle was almost double that of the other consoles in term of significant sales. And again the XBOX and PS2 both started and declined at different time periods, with the PS2 again more than doubling the life cycle of the competition. But because the 360 and the PS3 are so similar there may be some merit to that point but looking back at history there is no evidence that a generations consoles start and decline at the same rate for all consoles.

Yes well thats all jolly good, but can you buy an Xbox 360 for $199?

What is with these threads? If I had a PS3 right now, I wouldn't give a flying fuck about console sales. A damn good RPG recently released (exclusive), and one of the top rated games of all time JUST RELEASED. And this is all on a 3rd place console. Why you are here twisting numbers and getting "flamed" (for lack of a better word) and not playing one/either/both of those games and having a blast, only god knows why (hell, im not even sure if HE knows why).

Playstation fans are taking so much for granted this gen it's mindboggling. Having very powerful hardware that can produce ridiculously amazing graphics, 3rd party support rivaling (very subjective, some say better, others worse) that of the 2nd and even 1st place consoles, and a fucking EXCELLENT library of first party games, with many more in the not-so-distant future. now shut up, and HAVE FUN ffs

*gasps* now wheres my fucking inhaler...