Wii to topple PS2 from console throne

Following some serious number-crunching of NPD’s latest sales figures for North America,

Venture Beat

has predicted that Nintendo’s Wii is on track to snatch the PS2’s title of the world’s most successful ever home console – though it also predicts that PS3 is destined to finish third in the current next-gen race.

PS2’s lifetime sales to date currently number 140m worldwide, but lifetime sales to date of Wii are ahead of where PS2 was up to at this stage of its life by ten per cent. By 2014 Venture Beat predicts that Wii will have sold 154m units globally.

Conversely, after 26 months on the market in the US the PS3 has sold 6.79m units. By the same stage in its life, Nintendo’s GameCube had sold a very similar amount – 6.79m units.

For comparison’s sake, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has sold 9.2m Xbox 360s in the US, a performance very similar to that of the original Xbox, but as Venture Beat points out, the Xbox 360 has evolved to become a profitable machine for Microsoft – something its predecessor never accomplished.

In more upbeat news for Sony, the site predicts that the PS3 stands a good chance of lasting far longer than the GameCube did and could eventually prove profitable for Sony.