The great flaw of this thread is that those charts are launch aligned, and not date aligned.

The PS1 came a whole year before N64 and PS2 came again a year before the competition. So they had a succesful launch and spiked up by the time the competition launched their own stuff. The greatly utilized year headstart gave both PS the victory IMO.The rest of the gen falled swiftly.

This time around the 360 tried to establish itself before the competition and did great and could have this generation in the back if it didn't flop so badly in Japan. It could be at 15-16 million!

The PS3 failed to get any headstart as its previous iterations did before and had an acceptable launch. The Wii on the other hand had an extremely succesful launch and even now outsells all its competitors weekly in every area of the world. To me at least is pretty obvious Wii has the highest chances of winning right now while the PS3 and the 360 compete fiercely for second place.

To answer the thread's original question. If you consider launch numbers the first 4 months they are very very important. If there are no weird things like supply constraints happening all over the place they are pretty good indication of how the console will do for the rest of the year. Similary the first year gives you an idea of the second year and so forth.

P.S.

On the DC VS PS2 the dreamcast was doomed from the start from Sega's financial mess. Makes me wish Sega was more of a biz wiz as nintendo is.

I'm torn between "lol" and "this is a sad attempt at a topic."jwmakoto

FC still suck. They are a weakness of Nintendo's service and we should just swallow that bitter pill. Its true its not as bad as some make it out to be but that the joy of making new friends just for reviving your teammate or a "BOOM HEADSHOT" moment may never be experienced on a Nintendo console saddens me. Trash talking a stranger altough unbecoming of myself will too be missed. :D

XBL > PSN > Wi-Fi

I'tll stay that way this whole GEN.

EDIT: I forgots is April fool's so FC's may turn out as BAD as they make them out to be. Hoping this news are true tough. 

Out of topic.

 Hey Panzer you avatar is from U.N. Squadron right!? The game is awesome. You made me miss the old SHMUPS. :D

I'm very excited for the game myself. I think the wiimote implementation will be shallow most of the time (but still have its moments) but what I really look forward is the crazy humor of the series. It really cracks me up. 

If the Wii becomes the sales juggernaut most are predicting it'll become (I think it will too) neccesarily 3rd party will flock to the Wii. But this dosen't mean we are gonna see only below average games and minigame collections. We will OBVIOUSLY see quite a lot of them now and in the inmmediate future but when people start voting with their dollars a high quality "Alpha Party game" will get the most sales and probably dominate that segment. This will probably become true in most other segments as well. With only the games that match any of this characteristics achieving remarkable sales: 1. Really good game. 2. Really Appealing game. 3. Really Unique game. 4. Hyped to the moon game.

What I'm saying don't assume that because bad games like Red Steel sell well, it means Wii owners will gobble up any kind of crap. We will gobble up the best games (and the most unique or appealing) in each segment. Red Steel its a unique FPS that is very appealing (don't deny it, you want a sword battle), was hyped quite a bit and had no real competition. Hence the good sales. Pitch up Red Steel against "Awesome, appealing, hyped, unique unexistant FPS" and you'll see RedSteel flop like it should and the other succeed just as it should.

Thats interesting Vandal... Here is my resembling character:

Funny thing is, physically I resemble light. (Same hair color and form)

BTW I agree with the K' guy. Most people don't resemble the characters their posting, but aspire / wish to be more like them or because they are "cool." I am of course not a genius (not "L" level at least ) but still have a lot of quirks not unlike his and a love to see and partake on justice taking place. Still this thread is lots of fun... Proceed. :)