http://www.techsmessage.com/2007/03/18/ ... l-sharply/
http://www.dsrevolution.com/article.php?articleid=1524
It seems the PS3 by some dstance the current loser in the Console war. The post crimbo drop was far greater for the PS3 whose sales dropped 50% into feb while the Wii and 360 sales which were both far higher in the first place, only droped less than 25%. So the PS3 is not only selling far less it's losing ground to the others.
Things did not go according to plan, I guess Sony was expecting to bring the house down with sales and preorders and madness. That did not happen. It was so bad in London that Sony was able to give away a £2,000 Bracia flatscreen TV to the 125 people who turned up at the launch.
In Australia, many stores opened at Midnight to nothing, well not nothing, I guess you could hear crickets chirping. News and radio stations got desperate for stories and attempted to excite the crowd themselves. In one instance the news crew from a radio station began cheering themselves (whether or not it was canned sounds is another story).
The counter point is that Sony's big titles are out in September (Metal gear Solid 4) and December (Final Fantasy XIII) http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti ... 048/SPORTS
However the Wii has several franchaises to come it self (Mario Galaxy, Metroid, Pokemon plus a Final Fantasy of its own) and it can be said that when the market has not got behind console even the big franchaises can't do to much (GTA on the PSP and Mario/Zelda etc for Gamecube hardly saved the systems).
Of course Blueray mght pick up but then having the cheapest Blueray system around doesn't mean it's actually cheep and umd on the PSP was a disaster and DVD succeed as it had no new rivals and the video market was just finishing as a modern technology with digital tech being made perfectly common via PCs.
I actually think the DVD market is far from gone. The quality of picture on a DVD looks great, most people have tons of DVDs that they have no interest in replacing soon and Laser Disk failed simply because the video market was in it's prime and people were not really looking for the next thing yet. The same with minidisks. Both were technically better than what people had but they didn't offer people anything they didn't actually have like Blurray/HD-DVD. But that's my opinion.
A more optimistic assessment of the PS3:
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/...yid=single8004
But it back up it's "Sony will win out in the end" assessment with little in the way of fact. If being the most powerful console of a generation was enough then the xbox woul have edventually destroye the PS2 and the N64 would have buggered the PS1 up the arse for fun.
The power a game has is no indication of it's quality, or how much fun it will be. The PSP pisses on the DS in terms of tech and power. But the DS is crapping all over the PSP in sales dispite less hype, less media attention, no real franchaise exclusives and no movies and a weaker start sales wise.
So how did it best the PSP? It costantly streams out a whole host of great and original games. It's stylus also adds something unique. The Wii does the same. I've played Wii sports with friends and frankly dispite being a very simple game is the most fun I've had with a console that I can recall. It's also a very social console. bring some mates, a few drinks and a great night is a certainty. On your own what can best Zelda or the brilliance ( and manic jokes) of Rayman with a Wii controller?