You say October and November as if its a long period of time apart
And you are right, nobody is denying the Wii is selling on hype, its certainly not mad ebay sales as you only gain around $100 profit after fees so it has to be word of mouth and keeping up with the neighbors, but somebody is buying them as stores get weekly shipments (they do we just never see them because the systems are sold out of the shipping boxes most times)
Our dinky Target got 21 last week but sold out in under 1hr, unannounced to what scalpers? I dont really think so, just people wanting something others cant have or thats perceived as cool
But then again ultimately when a company is asking you to pay $600+ as is the case of the PS3, shouldn't it be garnering the "wow" and "buy me so I can make myself look good" fans and not the cheap and what many fan boys of Sony consider subpar system??
It seems to me that the only way the Sony will overtake its own creation the PS2 is to remove it slowly from the market because even 1 killer game on the PS3 wont make droves go and the backwards compatibilty arguement does not fly if the original system its being compatible with is barely over $100 (as you said we are in harsh economic times)