Generally, all the attention on consoles tends to be focused on the current generation of units. It's easy to forget however the hardware that came before, including the number one selling console of all time, the PlayStation 2, which to date has resulted in over 140 million sales around the world. To put that into perspective, that's more sales than the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 combined. Those 140 million sales didn't have happen overnight, of course, and represent the long history of the console, which as of today has been on the market for exactly nine years.
While Sony's sales are impressive enough, what's more impressive is how much staying power this console in particular has had. While the number of new titles for it has dropped sharply, it still receives new title releases along with its more powerful successor and still generates significant sales today. If you have gamed for any length of time, you know that for the most part, no platform lasts this long. PCs get upgraded every few years or sooner, consoles typically last only a few years as well - it is relatively few that remain this active so long after they emerged.