RE: Long cycle
This is sort of the new chic argument being used now that its clear the PS3 won't lead for some time to come and may have had its genesis in part from some of what Patcher said.
I highly doubt this will be reality. Nintendo also went by the same matra with the N64 and Cube with Peter Main's marathon runner vs. sprinter analogies.
The fact of the matter is, if Wii is in the market for the first 12 months and its leading pretty much everywhere, developers will shift support there, especially in all important Japan. Furthermore, the word of mouth and sales momentum Wii builds at retail will only snowball.
If a retail analyst for a particular chain looks at their financials and see Nintendo and Wii making up a large chunk of their revenues, which product do you think they will order more of next time around? which product will get more shelf space and promotion? And for retailers, it doesn't matter if it's a Nintendo branded game selling or a 3rd party branded game selling, it only matters to them a particular system is moving products and software.
Assuming of course Sony/MS has bled themselves to a point where they are weary of sticking to the 5 year cycle and decides to go for a longer cycle, it leaves them in a competitively weak position. Nintendo would love it. They could sit out wii for a full 6 years and launch the successor on year 7 well before Sony/MS wants to end their financially crippling PS3/X360 runs and when that happens Sony/MS will have to respond with their next gen consoles and it will play out a lot like how the PS2 launch played out. Sony had a full 6 years to milk the PSX/PSone and they still came out well ahead of both Nintendo and Microsoft. Sega tried to beat Sony of course, but the Saturn had a 2 year lifespan.
The above scenario of course assumes MS/Sony are in collusion about how long they want to keep their system around. Having launched their next-gen system before Nintendo and Sony, I would think Microsoft will be the first to launch a successfor once the market shakes out in a few years and they can determine how successful the 360 is.
Food for thought for those taking comfort in a supposed long lifecycle strategy for sony.