Thinking the PS2 was in dying sales mode like me? Think again, the Sony Playstation 2 sold more (280,000) console video game systems last month than any of the other new console systems including the red hot Nintendo Wii according to market research firm NPD.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 U.S. unit sales were 199,000 in March and outpaced Sony’s PlayStation 3 unit sales of 130,000.

After analyzing the Xbox 360 financials Roger Ehrenberg claims: “Gaming has been a disastrous endeavor for Microsoft, particularly from an investment perspective.” Read Mr. Ehrenberg’s analysis, it’s not your typical slash, burn and run M$ post. Wagner James Au disagrees, noting that 3-4 years from now when HDTVs are more affordable and broadband is more widespread Microsoft will be in a good position.

Maybe history will prove me wrong, but I think Microsoft is already in a more desirable position with Xbox Live, the world’s arcade. Maybe Japanese gamers haven’t grooved on the system as expected, but I think they’ll come around in time. The idea of a world’s arcade in your living room is compelling and love or hate Microsoft you have to credit them for making that a reality.

With that said, there is no arguing the PS2 has a great game library for it — we’ve bought two PS2 systems and the price is currently very right at $140 USD. Pricing is also helping the Wii, but is also a very fun game system to play (Wii Sports Bowling!). It’s hard to tell people in this day to drop more than a couple hundred dollars on a game system. Especially with gas price gouging, property and state taxes increasing and so on.

I’d like to see all game systems get back down to $250 and under. Sony is crazy to be in the $600 range with their current game lineup. Microsoft will be releasing their Xbox 360 Elite system with a more adequate sized hard drive (120 GB) at the end of this month which should help spur their sales.

I keep looking but don’t see the Nintendo Wii available in stores around here locally, although it’s available online at many places. The PS3, Xbox 360 and PS2 are available everywhere.

What current and last generation console game systems do you own?
Looking only at current and the last generation console gaming systems, we currently own the following:

2 Xbox 360 (one is off at the Texas repair center right now) [unboxing]
2 Xbox (hardly played any more)
1 PS2 (we had 2, but the other one died and wasn’t replaced),
1 PS3 [unboxing]
1 Nintendo Wii [unboxing]

When I want to play online the Xbox 360 is first choice. And of all the systems mentioned above only the Xbox 360 allows me to create my own homebrew games on it. When I want to play games with the family, the Nintendo Wii is my favorite. I enjoy a couple games on the PS3 and it’s the only system in our bedroom and thus somewhat shielded from our teenagers. The only game on the PS2 I play any more is Guitar Hero II because you can’t play that on the PS3 yet (no way to plugin controllers yet). I play a few of the PS3 games I bought in the Playstation Store here and there. No real significantly entertaining titles there yet.

Despite the Xbox 360 having way too many hardware problems, the system we’re still most likely to buy next will be the Xbox 360 Elite. I hope Microsoft has gotten the hardware figured out with this version. And yes if we do pull that trigger we’ll definitely be buying the extended warranty.

What does your new and last generation console gaming picture currently look like? What games on what systems are you playing the most?

• Official Playstation blog jabs Xbox 360 over unreliability
• Gametrailers ranks the top 10 videogame systems of all time
• More PS3 sell than Xbox 360 first five months of 2008
• The local retail search for the Xbox 360 Elite begins
• This coming holiday season’s console videogaming champ, chimp and chump
• XBox price drop planned in April: save 30 bones