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An updated Wii makes sense, a new PS3, no way. The PS3 has all the hardware I need -- just make some games already.

Actually you have that backwards.

Nintendo is making money hand over fist, they have no need to update the Wii as they have cornered the extremely lucrative casual market. Sony on the other hand is still yet to make a profit on the Playstation 3 and are trying to tout the Playstation 2 as its casual console by bringing out various new accessories for it. Sony and Microsoft are playing catch-up to Nintendo as the casual market is where console makers have traditionally made their money, Microsoft and Sony's recent departure from this is something of an oddity. The Wii selling more then the PS3 and Xbox 360 combined is evidence of this

So to recap, a hardware refresh of the Wii is unlikely due to the fact that its still selling by the truckload but Sony will be trying to replace the PS2 and PS3 with a new Playstation geared towards casual gamers. Remember as a non-casual gamer you are now the minority in the console world.

This is just patently false.

Wii: 24,658,719
Xbox 3: 21,774,542
Playstation 3: 12,769,838

Approximate numbers from nexgenwars.com, methodology is here.

Further to this, the Xbox division is earning $178 million per quarter..

By the way, did you know that the Xbox 360 is a PowerPC box too?

This is just patently false.

Wii: 24,658,719
Xbox 3: 21,774,542
Playstation 3: 12,769,838

Approximate numbers from nexgenwars.com, methodology is here.

Further to this, the Xbox division is earning $178 million per quarter..

By the way, did you know that the Xbox 360 is a PowerPC box too?

Or it could have something to do with there being twice as many Wiis sold as PS3s.

PS3 is also designed to be able to boot Linux out-of-the-box. But the PS3 doesn't seem to be tanking because of it.

The PS3 has sold approximately half as many units as the second-place console (Xbox 360). How badly does it have to do before you consider it to be "tanked"?

(to be fair, the reasons it's selling so poorly probably have nothing to do with whether it can run Linux or not)

Only one problem with this: The video game market already has a three-way competition; Apple would make it four. Slamming just the easy target (Microsoft) won't work this time around, particularly since the sales numbers currently favor Nintendo.

*And yet MS still controls an approximate 75% of the web browser market, Windows still controls an approximate 90% of the OS market, and there has been more than 2x as many 360's as there are PS3s sold.

As much as I might like Linux and OSS ideologies to replace Windows and MS, I honestly believe you would have to be living in dream land to think that MS is all of the sudden going to implode, let alone do it within the next 2-3 years. Just like Firefox has slowly and steadily taken market share from IE6+7, Linux will slowly and steadily take market share from Windows.

Why won't it happen fast? Firefox is a (if not the) poster child OSS program, and receives a significant amount of word of mouth advertising. It is free (in many ways, but cost is the only one that the vast majority cares about), and is almost 100% of the time rated as better than IE in reviews. And yet despite all these reasons its (albeit growing) market share is around 15%, compared to the vastly worse IE 6's 42ish% and IE 7's 32ish%.

Obviously, technical superiority and free-ness are not good enough reasons to get everyone to switch over in one big surge. Over time as Linux and OSS software in general continues to improve, the momentum to change will increase, but this change will not happen overnight. Here's to hoping for a majority market share in the next 3-4 years, but I wouldn't bet money on anything less than 6 years, and I wouldn't be surprised if it took 10 or more.

I'm not trying to be pessimistic or defeatist, but rather realistic. If it weren't for the fact that I am a tech nerd and encouraged people to switch I think nearly all my friends and family would still be using IE, let alone know what Linux is.

*Disclaimer: Yes I realize no market share analyzer is 100%, or even 90% accurate, and yes I realize these often have a tendency to under-represent Linux, but these statistics do give at least a general idea of where the majority is at.

Check out this site: http://nexgenwars.com/

They say the numbers are estimate, but close. Any one have a better source? It's pretty incredible that Nintendo has shipped more units compared to Microsoft in half the time.

There used to be a site similar to NexGen Wars that split console sales by region.

However, even without those charts, since it's well known that the XBox 360 is doing worse in Japan than the Wii and PS3, by a considerable margin.

The corollary is that the XBox 360 is outselling the other two consoles in Europe and North America. If it wasn't, its numbers would have fallen much farther behind the Wiis than 500,000.

Hrmmm, 8.8 million seems to be more than half of 11.4 million to me...

http://nexgenwars.com/

I don't know if I see MS doing this though, at least not right away - even though their console is a year old(er), and technically has the same general specs... if they released anything soon it would still be competeing with the PS3 and the Wii - even if was better. I don't know exactly why the Dreamcast kicked the bucket - but it was WAY ahead of the current systems (and from what I recall had some kick-butt games).

They say the best place to set up shop is right next to your competition - and it's true. I don't know, but I would be interested to see if 360 purchases increased with the releases of Wii & PS3. Why is that, you ask? Simple - I get my nice fat (I wish) paycheck, and have $500-600, and I'm thinking "Dude, I want me a console..." so here I go to Best Buy. Wii is sold out, PS3 is sold out... but Xbox360? Hmmm... and there are a ton of sweet games for this.. and heck, I can buy two or three controllers, several games... score!

AFAIK. I would be interested to see some numbers on that though. But that's why I think it would be a bad move for MS to release another system so soon - no hype, no marketing, no money. According to a (loose) estimate by NexGen Wars, Xbox has sold 11 Million consoles since Nov 2005. The Wii has sol 8 Million since November 2006. My 10 second research reported that the 360 was forecasting 8-10 Million units sold by the end of 2006. I'd be curious to see for sure some sales figures from November 2005 - July 2006.

While the 360 did suffer shortages for several months after release, we still see the Wii consistently sold out for... pushing 10 months now? And they're fairly consistenly releasing more systems. While I think the Xbox did get some advantages over the other two consoles, I think if they want to survive this next release, rather than trying to rush a new system (especially if it inherits the unbelievable 30% failure rate of the 360), they should take the time to develop it really well, build up a good reserve of them, and about a month before all the other consoles release - have a surprise release where they flood the market (more or less). That way they have advantage of the hype and marketing from other systems, plus they get their console to the public before the other systems. And here's the scenario I see happening then:

"Dad! I've got my $xxx from mowing lawns this summer, lets go get a Nintendo/PS3!"
"Oooh, looks like they're sold out... what about this Xbox thingie?"
"Hmm... woah, that game looks sweet! Alright!"

And now they own his soul... oh wait, no just his money. And stuff.

If it happens like this, remember you saw it here first!

I thought the same thing too, until I started to hear what friends are saying and did some research. Seems Wii's are still hard to purchase, because of the demand for them. A friend passed me this URL to check out the current Next-Gen War stats. http://nexgenwars.com/

PS3 sales are pretty slow and they will slow to a trickle if there are no PS3 exclusives.
I don't know if the Wii will over take the 360 but at the current rate of sales it might. The Wii doesn't have to beat the PS3 and the 360. It just has to make Nintendo a lot of money. And it is. I just don't see sales of the Wii going down or the sales of the PS3 going up. Take a look here http://nexgenwars.com/ the Wii is lagging the 360 by that much. If Wii sales keep up at this rate it will equal or surpass 360 by next Christmas.

Lets look at the numbers, depending on who you go through:

http://nexgenwars.com/
360 - 10.8M
PS3 - 2.3M
Wii - 5.3M

http://www.vgcharts.org/ngwars.php
360 - 9.8M
PS3 - 2.8M
Wii - 6.3M

so yeah, I can definitely see how they are holding back on production given that the system has been out for 4 months now and selling 1.5M a month. Could you imagine if they weren't holding back?

The Wii is trying to free the gaming industry of the need for creating better and better graphics. And it's working, too.

http://nexgenwars.com/

Sony is a little over 1.4 million PS3's *shipped* as of now, you think they are going to sell 5 million more, especially with Europe's '$840'ish USD price tag? And given that HDTV's are not as "common" in the US? Keep dreaming.

http://nexgenwars.com/ is your friend.

just so you know where to look,
http://nexgenwars.com/

Sony needs it more than Microsoft

This means that in 6 weeks Sony managed to outsell the XBox360 in its first few months of sales. Despite the massively higher price tag. Despite HD not being as new and shiny.

The NPD figures are USA only too. The Wii would have sold more but Nintendo shuffled some half a million into Europe for a launch there.

The figures on nexgenwars.com are clearly pulled from thin air though.

It basically just takes time and research to estimate the numbers as closely as possible.

Now for the new consoles it is a little harder since there is no previous sales data to go off of. What I do for these is research how many they are expecting to have on launch and by the end of the year. For the launch counter I get it to around the number expected, and then I slow it down to pace it so that it will reach a good estimate for the end of the year, and as usual I will adjust anything if any official word comes in.

http://nexgenwars.com/
http://www.vgcharts.org/
Any other tech news site, such as this. Take their statistics, add them all up, and take the average. You decide.

http://nexgenwars.com/

and

http://www.vgcharts.org/

The article you quote states "has likely sold over 1.2 million", which to me says "we don't have all the numbers, but do have this figure." It is also the lowest number I've ever seen when talking about Wii sells. Considering that Nintendo stated that they would ship 4 million (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?s tory=11510) by the end of 2006, and there have been no reports of Nintendo falling well short of that number, the numbers I'm quoting a within the ballpark. While you're 1.2 million seems to be parking the car.

Have a look at http://nexgenwars.com/, the numbers on that site appear to be pretty believable.

http://www.vgcharts.org/

http://nexgenwars.com/

Perhaps you'll want to visit the site http://nexgenwars.com/ to get a daily update on console sales.

The owner does, in their forums.

• Xbox360: 8,058,282

• PS3: 383,525

• Wii: 1,203,618

http://www.nexgenwars.com
Yeah I trust that as much as I trust the sales figures relased by companies like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft.

Nice how they have no info on how they really get their numbers, and no real contact or "about this site" info.

With the weekly Japanse one you can tell how many sold that week vs. total, but beyond that part of the world....

over 1 million units, they currently are at 1.1 mio units sold according to http://www.nexgenwars.com/ and by the end of next week they will hit the 2 mio marks, because the rollouts in europe and Australia are still to be done.

And Europe alone will count for 600.000 while Europe is not that Nintendo crazy, I do not expect lines as long as in Japan or the USA, it still will sellout within the first day, I assume.

The reason why Europe is not as Nintendo crazy as the rest is easily explained, they usually charge the highest prices while often if not always are the last to get the releases. Big vendors do not push Nintendo too much over here due to many reasons (the average ds corner in the big stores over here in central europe is more like ok we have it too, but we want to sell PSPs). Or to some it up in other words, Nintendo Europe is a bunch of morons who really should get their act together, the same goes for Apple Europe!

I cant imagine how PC integration would be important - cause, you know, you already HAVE a pc. But thats fine. I cant argue about your likes and dislikes.

Your other points are weak, because they totaly discount something based on "well someone else does it differently", which is lame.

And your backwards compatibility argument is a joke. The Virtual console has (or will have) almost every single Nintendo game ever developed, along with several other consoles from several other developers.

And the basic controller design has remain unchanged, and i affirm that the GCN controller and especially N64 controller revolutionized the basic controller designs to what we see today.

And no, Sony will be dead last, wondering who robbed him.

Mircosoft will probably be in a short lead. Yu can already see how things are panning out: Here

Its time for innovation to take the lead. Not "ooh, you can watch movies on me!"

-Red

Not sure how credible this is but according to http://nexgenwars.com/ Nintendo is already in second.

Gamasutra is also reporting sales figures via Ebay for the two consoles. 15,000 PS3s were sold, while the Wii cracked 27,000 via the popular online auction site.

Gamasutra is also reporting sales figures via Ebay for the two consoles. 15,000 PS3s were sold, while the Wii cracked 27,000 via the popular online auction site.

Or should we say current gen now? Anyway, see the tally so far here. I would love to have the sources on these, but I am ready to believe the numbers. And considering at what I have personally been in stores on PS3 launch day, Microsoft sold a LOT of 360's that day. For dissapointed PS3 buyers, Microsoft proposed in Canada a bundle which contained a premium system, with Ridge Racer 6, Ghost Recon : Advanced Warfigher, Xbox Live Arcade Unplugged (6 games from the XBL Marketplace) and last but not least Gears of War (standard edition). Everything for 450CAN$. That was a one day sale (now the price is around 600CAN$). That was 50CAN$ less than what we pay for a premimum system normally and a couple hundred less than what you would have paid if you bought everything separately. They were flying off the shelves. So MS probably outsold the PS3 on that day. Well, in Futureshop's across Canada at least. And they GARANTEED (and still do) the console to be available, or they throw in a 30 dollar rebate off your next purchase. The store I was in in downtown Montreal had run out of copies of Gears of War so they still sold the bundle and indicated on the receipt that the customer didn't get the game and could come and get it any day now.

http://nexgenwars.com/ has sales numbers, if these are from a hat or reliable sources is not at all clear.

My post would have made more sense if this thing would have parsed my comment properly. There was supposed to be a link in there, but it didn't come out. I tried to reply with the link in my new post, but the replies aren't showing up. It was supposed to link to this: http://www.nexgenwars.com/

They only compare to the High End PS3 price with its support of HDMI.

Because of HDCP and ICT. When ICT gets turned on(and it's going to be turned on sooner or later), your $500 PS3 and $30 BR Discs are no better than a $30 DVD player and it's $10 discs.

Neither of the other boxen have HDMI, so the only fair comparison would be to the $100 cheaper non-HDMI version. The more expensive PS3 also has a larger hard-drive, but even the low end one has a 20gig harddrive.

Neither one of the other consoles have blu-ray as a selling point. So they don't need HDMI to be future-proof against HDCP/ICT.

PS3 will likely be Linux compatible straight out of the box without modding. How could Slashdotters not go ape for this console?

PS2 had linux. PS2 linux was crippled. PS3 will have linux. PS3 linux will be crippled. If I don't get full access to the hardware, what's the point? And if I have full access to the hardware, there's nothing stopping me from soft-modding the thing. It's not going to happen. I'm sure we'll see news if it does, but yea, not counting on it.

Two less capable machines do not add up to the same value as one more powerful machine if it does what you want.

When you say capable, capable of doing what? Crunching a few more theoretical floating-point ops? Per Carmack, the 360 is almost as capable in any real sense of delivering the visuals. Then we have the wii, which has it's own little feature-set that isn't replicated anywhere else. When it comes to gaming capability, the PS3 is no more capable of delivering an entertaining engrossing experience than any other system.

Or are we talking about capable of playing an unproven format? What blu-ray movies are you looking forward to, precisely? Ultraviolet, the 5th element, Terminator 1/2? Lol.

Or are we talking about capable of playing third party games that don't even have release dates yet? Because counting on that worked damn well for Nintendo fans in the PS/N64 era. Why, FFVII was *never* demoed on project reality. That's a myth I just made up. And Kojima of MGS fame really wouldn't flee Sony for Nintendo and his dev-buddies over there in a heartbeat if Konami management let him. Also a myth I completely just made up.

Oh! I know, capable of storing more data per disc! What about capable of raping my wallet with $100 games! Because it's more expensive to master(so it costs more initially) and stamp blu-ray(so per disc it costs more) and the content generation expenses are orders of magnitude higher. And because every single game out now has totally exceeded single layer DVD w/o using pre-rendered video! Wait, no, they haven't. Even oblivion didn't, and it was crammed full of voice-acting.

The HD-DVD player was the most ludicrous example of all to throw in the article. They even envoked the Betamax comparison (when in my opinion HD-DVD will likely be the really Betamax redux). The whole thing smacked of trying to stop Sony momentum from building.

You have a crystal ball? Because I don't. And what momentum? Have you not been browsing the internet lately? Have you not gone over to any of the poll sites(like nexgenwars? Are you oblivious to which way the wind is blowing? Sony *has* no momentum. They completely blew E3 and the internets have been against them ever since. Hell, all of my local gaming store employees are at *most* neutral towards the thing.

There's a small subset of hopefuls that crop out of the woodwork every so often, only to get beaten down and retreat back into silence.

I myself am looking forward to a $500 dollar blue ray player that plays games and hooks up to my 1080p NEC 1350.

I'd expect nothing less from a dumb swede.