But not sooner than a few years into its supposed long life cycle

Dec 12, 2007 11:42 GMT  ·  By

As a PS3 owner, you know there's no chance in hell your console will catch up to Nintendo's Wii in sales. Or is there...? According to this piece up on The Economist, Screen Digest reckons that Sony's next-gen machine will indeed catch up to the Wii, but not this year, or the next, or the year after... When then?

Well, not later than Tretton's ten-year life cycle, but sometime in between - 2011 to be more exact, about the time scientists will probably come up with a solution to create atmosphere on Mars so we can inhabit it. Screen Digest handles news, research and statistics on the film, cinema, television, video, cable and interactive media globally, so there's no reason not to believe their predictions, let alone because they make absolute and perfect sense.

Of course people will start buying PS3s once the machine is cheaper, sporting more and better games that make better use of the Cell Processor by the passing of each month and so on. By 2011, Nintendo's Wii will be worse than GameCube is today, while Microsoft's Xbox 360 will probably be the equivalent of today's PS2, in terms of popularity. Sony PS3 on the other hand will have the best games to offer, featuring top-notch visuals and online game modes, not to mention that PlayStation Home will probably be flourishing by then. Add a couple more services and PS3 exclusive titles and Tretton's ten-year life cycle should begin to sound like a reality.

Speaking of which, here's what SCEA's head revealed in an interview: "We realized that not every consumer is going to be ready for what the PlayStation 3 offers in the first year and I don't know that we expect or need them to be ready for it. We need them to be ready for it over the next decade," said the President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America.

So, do Screen Digest's forecast and Tretton's predictions match? I'd say they do.