Industry analysts from Strategy Analytics have made the fairly interesting prediction that they expect to see Sony’s PlayStation 3 come out on top in this console generation.

The release of the PS3 Slim really did help revitalise the PS3 as a whole...

Indeed, it’s something that’s still quite a long way off, given the fact that this console generation looks set to last a lot longer than previous ones. Indeed, Sony has said before that it fully expects the PlayStation 3 to have a ten-year life cycle, though that’s a statement whose veracity is fairly openly questioned. Still, it’s interesting to note that the folks from Strategy Analytics seem to think it fairly reasonable that we could see the PS3 last up to five years longer than the current market dominator that is Nintendo’s Wii.

Indeed, according to the Strategy Analystics blog, there’s some suspicion that the Wii has peaked in terms of sales, and that it’s unlikely to continue to see the same growth as both Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 as we enter 2011.

Indeed, the word is that,

“Nintendo has done a great job with the Wii in bringing console games to new audiences. But its sales are now falling, particularly in mature markets, and its installed base will peak in 2011. Ownership of both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 will hit their highest points between 2012 and 2014.”

If nothing else, it’s curious to see industry analysts fall in Sony’s favour again, something that very few have done since the earliest days of the PlayStation 3, when the device’s cost proved to be a little prohibitive. Still, ever since the release of the PS3 Slim and the simultaneous price drop, things seem to have been going very well indeed for Sony… could it manage to pull this console generation out of the fire, gain the upper hand and pip Microsoft at the post?

If it can, we’ll be there to mix metaphors like a fine cocktail.