The Nintendo Wii, the clear front runner of the current generation of consoles, is preparing to beat the numbers the PlayStation 2, the biggest last gen console, was posting back in 2002, two years after its release by Sony. This shows that despite the less than stellar performance of the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PlayStation 3 from Sony, the home gaming console market is still going strong and selling well.

Michael Pachter, the Wedbush Morgan analyst who is watching the videogame industry, is saying that the numbers of hardware sales, which are driven by the Nintendo Wii, are a strong signal that the industry as a whole is “resisting the effects of a recession.”

It's interesting to see the shift that occurred between the beginning of the decade and 2008, when it comes to gaming and especially to consoles. The PlayStation 2 was a hardcore machine targeting gamers who wanted better graphics, more space for game and better control. The console is still selling today and a recent report from Nielsen shows us that it is the most played console of 2008 amongst gamers in the United States.

The Nintendo Wii, meanwhile, is less hardcore oriented, with a larger appeal to non-gamers and with less graphical and processing power than its rivals. The console has some real hits, like Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii, that are still in the Top Ten sales charts, but it lacks shooters and traditional role playing titles. Also, third party developers and publishers do not have as much success on the console as the Nintendo made games.

Patcher says that “We believe that most of the publishers we cover will manage market share gains on the Wii over the next year,” as it becomes clear that the install base of the Nintendo Wii is set to be larger than that of its two biggest rivals combined.