SO WHAT? Does that mean for the rest of time there shall only be 2 consoles and if anyone dares to try to compete with the others, they shall die?

It means the market will only support two. It means that more than that fragments things too much, as far as who gets exclusive games, and such, and something has to give. If the market wouldn't support three consoles during a decade of economic expansion, I doubt it will now, during a recession. I think there's only room for two.

Yes, I'm sure. Anyone care to confirm this with me?

In my area the N64 was sold out on launch day and set a record for fastest selling console at the time. It took me two months to finally get one. It was a very hot system due to the excitement over Mario 64. However, I can't say for sure that they had 500,000 for launch.

I can afford neither the time nor the money to play any games right now, but for what it's worth, in Alabama at least, the X-Box seems to have gone over like gangbusters. The specialty gaming stores all sold out, the Wal-Marts all sold out in "about 12 minutes", and CompUSA sold out before noon.

In the past, there really weren't three companies as big as Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony promoting their systems either. Sega has never really been that big of a home player... the Genesis was their only real hit. NEC's Turbografx just wasn't anywhere near as heavily promoted as the SNES and the Genesis, and the hardware was plainly inferior. Sega's Saturn was also poorly promoted, and it's lack of 3D capabilities made it get steamrolled by the Playstation and the N64.

It would be interesting if they released sales numbers by geographic region (down to the city level). I bet XBox sold especially well in most college towns (noticed you were in Tuscaloosa, thus the college town reference).

That's an interesting question. I'm sure there probably IS a sales spike in college towns. I was actually referring to Birmingham, which isn't so much a college town- that's where I was last night.

I don't agree with that, but if it works out that way, then X-box is the odd man out. PS2 already has a huge installed base, and will likely stay on top, and Nintendo has a big enough Niche market to ensure their success. So if only two will survive it will be PS2 and GC.

But like I said, I think all three will do fine

Actually my college town, which has some 80,000 residents, 55,000 of which are students, didn't sell out fast at all. I bought my unit from best Buy around noon. There is tons of hype about the Xbox, but few persons willing to put out the Ca$h