This goes to show the strength of the 360 games sales in this generation, and the continued strength and growth of the PS2.

There are a lot of people who have yet to move to the next generation. Christmas 07 and 08 will be the deciding factors in this generation.

Because Wii owners buy Nintendo games and little else.
Always have, always will.

There are obviously a few factors at work. Advertising for anything but the 360 version is totally non-existant. You see Madden on TV, and at the end of the commercial, you see Xbox 360 Live. I don't know how much they're getting for that, but it seems obvious that it's hurting their sales on other consoles, because the average person doesn't know it exists!

I guess the Wii isn't bought by the casual gamer as much as some people thought. A football game is more on the casual side of things, but it didn't sell on the Wii, but we know 3rd party games will sell on the Wii if they're good (WE4) or even mediocre (Red Steel), but those are more "hardcore" than Madden, so Wii doesn't seem to have the casual base many people thought.

As a whole, sales are much lower than one might have hoped. Lower sales were to be expected, but it is a lot lower than last year. The decline in Xbox sales and increase in 360 sales were about equal, but no one picked up the slack for the PS2 sales drop. I wonder if that is due to the one sided advertising.

Madden (this year) is actually a good game. Wow EA actually made a decent game for once. Although it did take them what like 3 years to get it right.

I remember buying FFIX on PSN because I was looking for swan song PS1 titles to enjoy on PS3

The cpu was hard to work for 3rd party, butt the cell was really powerfull and fast. It wasnt just pr or secret sauce. Uc2 and killzone 2 were amazing. But 3rd party want money. They also problems with the ram. Only first party was able to make huge jumps from first gen games to second gen. It was an expensive console but the tech was much more powefull at launch then this gen.

Wasn't this already established in 2006? Online Sony's first party studios took advantage of the cell.

" was PS3 hard to Develop for?"

Here we go again , they been saying this since mid 2006-2007ish . of course the CPU was hard to work with but the Cell was fast and powerful .
Next year Article : " was PS4 to Easy Develop for ?" slow day in office ?

P.S . over last few years N4G been Repeating same subject matter with Slightly different title, same old subject .
I would hate to be a writer busting my brain to come up with a New lie to draw readers interest end up repeating 2006 article again .

I would not say "hard" to develope... but it went against the norm and it also threatened a well established pc archetype of which many in the pc business was against. Not with ill intent, but to try and change the way digital hardware works... it is huge mountain to climb against a well established pc design.
A lot of third party studios kind of just did not try because they did not want to support the change.
It went beyond just gaming with the backlash of sonys cell design.
Sony has always tried to push innovation and sometimes they miss or go to far against the norm and fail. Like betamax vs VHS. Betamax was the superior hardware but they lost that battle as well.
It is why Microsoft created the competition. They were getting beat in so many ways and their monopoly was getting threatened by everyone. Apple, Google, etc etc. Microsoft had to fight back to try save their dwindling sales. Lose the hardware, you lose the os.