It's all about the games. In this generation of consoles, it doens't matter how long you've been out.
Remember the dreamcast came out before the ps2 and was widely popular and was supposed to be the next 'big' system on the block.

We all know how that went.
Both the PS3 and the 360 will make plenty of money given sony can keep a few exclusives to themselves. Virtua figher is gonna be hitting the PS3 first as well as the exclusive motorstorm. Not a bad place to be for sony at the moment. They're not doing as well as they would have liked, but they're not nearly as bad off as everyone claims.