Having worked in a game store for a couple of years, and owned every major console except a Playstation 1 since the SNES (including handhelds) I feel I am fairly qualified to make a worthy comment.......
The PS3, dispite being over-priced will sell in England, although most of its sales will start to really come through in it's second year, when the console is always aimed at being 2 thirds of its original price or less. The Playstation 2 fan-base, which is the biggest console market in England will give Sony an instant customer base.
Even if it doesnt actually turn out to be any good, people will still buy it because of Sony's "sheep" fanbase. The PS2 was a pile of crap and didnt even have a hardware graphics card, relying on one main processor to do all the hard work, and very little memory to back it up. This is why textures, loading and gameplay was so much better on the Xbox.
However, although the Xbox was an ugly brute it was based on an already proven solid platform (a retro-fitted pc) and so was able to pull off much better gaming if you gave it a chance. Despite the PS2 having a lot more games, you would usually find that there were 10 crap PS2 games released for every good one, and Xbox games maintained a much higher standard.
As for the Gamecube well it succeeded in short glorious bursts with the Star Wars Rogue Squadron games, Resident Evil series, particularly 4 and some of the Nintendo studio classics. Unfortunately it didn't quite appeal to people because of its slightly childish looks and repuation, and the fack that it was a pure games machine, not a multimedia machine like the PS2 and Xbox.
On to the New-Gen and the Xbox 360 is doing quite well despite scepticism and although the release schedule is proving to be a little slow. If appreciated in High Definition with 5.1 surround the 360 can really show itself off. Some of the up-coming games look fantastic, and the Xbox Live aspect has already proven to be a massive hit. I can really see Microsoft proving itself properly in the games market during the life of this console.
The Wii will get a mixed reception much as the Gamecube, although Nintendo have done the right thing by including DVD play back and other extra options such as online play and retro-games downloads etc. The let down will unfortunately be the graphics where they fall short of the PS3 and Xbox, however what the Wii lacks in graphics it will hopefully make up with gameplay via the completely absurd controller. I'm not sold on the idea yet but I have seen Nintendo do stupider things and pull it off.
As i said the PS3 will undoubtably sell however I am still not convinced with it starting off so pricey and having less original software support as the XB360 has taken some of the exclusive deals Sony previously had in their stride, particularly Grand Theft Auto, the next edition of which will apear on both consoles simultaneously, whilst previously Sony have always had 2 months or more exclusive release of Grand Theft Auto titles.
It will surely be an interesting battle of the new generation, and I will probably get suckered into buying either the PS3 or Wii as well as the XB360 i currently own
Ben