For how long?

I have to wonder how long will this trend continue. I played zelda for the wii and i have to say what an awesome game.. except for the lame graphics! Even using the composite connection the image quality was so lame and i wouldn't want too play much games watching those low def graphics. With no good games comming out that i have seen you have you have too wonder even if you had a wii what are you gona play on it?

I don't trust surveys

I fully agree the Wii is kicking butt but many people I know that have a Wii for their kids have a PS3 or Crapbox 360 for themselves too. They try and push it off as if everyone only buys one console.

Analysts are useful for WHAT again?

"Michael Pachter, a video games analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, predicted that PS3 sales would accelerate even further if Sony slashed its prices.

'It's highly likely that when the PS3 gets below $200, it will sell as well as the PS2.'"

Thank you, Captain Obvious! Sony does not have the ABILITY to slash prices beyond where they already are. Are yields getting better? Are consoles getting cheaper? You betcha. But even if Sony finally were to break even selling consoles (to say nothing of R&D), they would still be in the hole from the ones they sold at a huge loss earlier.
But wait, game sales will save Sony, right? Wrong--the PS3 has the lowest attach rate and the highest development cost for next gen titles.

(5:5:9 for Wii/PS3/360.) Money is made via software sales, not hardware sales (though Nintendo has likely been minting a pretty penny from all those accessories.) Even though the Wii has/will have more total consoles sold than the 360 (11 point something million), until the attach rate gap disappears, the 360 likely remains more profitable.

Oh...let's not forget that the Wii has been priced at around $250 this whole time. The price really can't do TOO much from there (eventually it may hit $150, and $100 near EOL...but that's a few years out.) What happens when the 360 and PS3 stop being twice the cost of the Wii, and suddenly only $50 more?

Just some food for thought.

Disclaimer: I own none of these consoles, and no stock, yadda yadda journalistic integrity...

$oftware

"otherwise why are we in this business?" $oftware Maybe?

You missed one thing

Trevor....

What about the fact that Nintendo has been making money off the Wii since it came out. You know not selling the system for a loss like the 360 & ps3 are? On top of that fun on the Wii is most had when playing with friends and family. Thats a lot of high priced controllers they have to move. Not only is Wii selling like hot cakes Nintendo is making the a Mint.

The Wii is active and fun,

the others you sit on your bum getting fatter playing better graphic versions of games from 3+ years ago.

The Wii doesn't make you feel bad getting one for your family because they can have fun playing it together, it's more social and fun and open to all ages.

PS3 and xbox360 cater to 12-40 year old males, again, like the PS2, PS1, PC games, etc etc. Same old same old, a bit like the "music BUSINESS".

Intersting comments

Considering that this is a tech site, it's sometimes amazing to read comments that are so short sighted. Ah well.

PS3 has motion enebaled control that is essentially as capable as anything that the Wii has. It's done in a different way, and the controler is a conventional shape. But the technology in the Sixaxis and DualShock3 is capable of pretty much anything the Wii-mote can do. Should Sony wish to they can easily create a wand controller (why not add the accelerometers to the Blu-Ray remote??).

The 360 too can easily have all the motion control wizardry in the game, if Microsoft wants it to. The tech is not exactly rocket science.

Wii-Fit? Ah, a balance board. Yeah, that's obviously one piece of tech that no one else could do, right? Oops, sorry, already been done in the arcades, years ago. Kinda similar to those snowboarding/water skiing games, perhaps crossed with some good old dance dance revolution. Which, btw, if any one wants to lose some weight in front of a games console is probably a better bet than standing with your feet rooted to the spot like you don on the Wii-fit.

Why mention this? Simple, the Wii sells really well because it's cheap, not because it's the most innovative. Though, many a parent looks at the commercials and thinks "Hey, young Johnny can get his exercise with this thing!". Then they buy one, only to find that young Johnny has found he can flick his wrist to achieve the same results. You know, the PS2 is cheap too, and it has more well reviewed games than the Wii will ever have games published. If people want a cheap console they already have two choices. Nintendo or Sony. If people want HD gaming they have two choices as well, Sony and Microsoft.

Nintendo is selling lot's of Wii right now. Good on them. But as someone else pointed out, those buying Wii are not only buying a Wii, they generally have at least one other console. So, it's not like once someone has bought a Wii, they never buy anything else. You know what else, 480i/480p games look like crap on a big HD screen, and more and more people are buying HD TVs in the 32-inch range and up. More and more people see HD and want their games that way. Sony and Microsoft both knew that this first HD generation of gaming would take a while to develop simply because the HD market itself had to develop. As HD continues to break through into the mainstream - something that is already happening in most major gaming markets - both Sony and Micrsoft are well placed to continue the growth of their console business. Sony talks always of a 10 year plan. PS1 and now PS2 certainly had a 10 year life. We're in year two for Sony, and year three for Microsoft. Microsoft may not be looking quite so long term - they aren't a CE manufacturer, so we can excuse their short sightedness - but they are certainly not going to fork over another $4bn on a new Xbox until they've at least returned the investment on the 360 (over all though, the Xbox business has cost MS lots of money - it's just that no one talks about the original Xbox and it's losses any more).

So we're probably 3-4 years from a new console from MS, and 4-6 years from a new console by Sony. If MS can clear up their reliability issues, there's no reason why they could not keep going on the 360 for at least 4 more years before re-upping. PS3 certainly has the legs to go 4 more years, probably more thanks to the financially painful decision to put that Blu-Ray drive in the PS3, and investing in a more complex design. Those decisions mean that the PS3 likely has longer legs in terms of programmers extracting more and more performance over time - like they did on PS2.

So, let's run forwards a few years. Nintendo has already replace their Wii with Wii-II or whatever they end up calling it. It will have the power of four game cubes strapped together (presumably :D ). Microsoft will be talking up the 360 while feverishly working on a new unit. Sony will be talking up the PS3 and dropping it's price again. Figure on at least $50 off per year until the thing hits that magical $200 point. Though, with inflation, once it hits $250-$300, the effect should be just about about as strong, especially if the HDD capacity continues to grow with commodity drives. I'd think that MS will do something similar, and the base units from both Sony and MS will sell for a price within $50 of each other for the remainder of their product lives.

It's possible that PS3 games will continue to get better for a couple more years before hitting a plateau. Sure the occasional GT4 platform stretching game may arrive later in the PS3s life, but the games we'll be seeing in 2010 will probably represent the peak of the performance the unit is capable of. Xbox360 games are already beginning to level out, but will no doubt continue to improve for at least one more year. So we know that by 2010, we'll be seeing the 'A-game' from developers on both platforms. Nintendo will have to refresh their platform long before either Sony or Microsoft. Both Sony and Microsoft will continue to innovate on their console, and as their games begin to plateau in terms of new performance increases, the games will instead begin to innovate in other areas as they have done on PS2.

When PS2 launched it didn't have a plethora of dance mat games, there were no Buzz like quiz games with new controllers. No wireless controllers with motion sensing, no balance board games, no eye-toy games, no Singstar or Guitar hero games and so on, and so forth. PS2 saw the most innovation in the latter half of it's life, as programmers and game designers learned to use it's capabilities in different ways.

I see both the 360 and PS3 following this pattern as they age gracefully. Unfortunately Nintendo has shown with N64 and GC a tendency to simply jump to the next console and leave the old one high and dry. Let's hope they don't do that again, or else they may need their cash mountain to survive a serious buying drought in due course.

Graphics! what about gameplay. Nintendo have got it right

Yeah the thing is, Nintendo has totally tapped into the minds of parents and kids alike. They've sold over 70 million DS'. They're selling more Wii's per month than the 360 and PS3 put together. They've sold more Wii fit's than Sony has sold PS3's and the demand is so high for them that the prices are skyrocketing. Sure Sony could bring out a controller, sure Microsoft could. The difference is Nintendo introduced there's as the selling point and it works very well. Very very well and now they're creating an extension to the motion controller that will map exactly where your hands are in relation to your body. The truth is it's revolutionised the industry. The fun has come back into consoles. It's not just another first person shooter or a racing game. The six axis controller is poor. It's nothing like the Wii controller. For the last couple of years I've heard people slating the DS saying it's rubbish, not as good as the PSP's graphics. They sell nearly 500,000 a month!! You better just get used to it guys. Nintendo has cleaned up. The DS has outsold the PSP 2.5 to 1. The Wii has outsold the PS3 by 3 to 1 and it's accelerating, not slowing down. The graphics have reached pretty much the best they're going to get. You might see more physics, better shading but honestly when you look at games from 3 or 4 years ago, you don't really say 'The graphics are awful'. The truth is people want gameplay and Nintendo is aiming at that.