Again, my figures that I've placed since April 2006: Playstation 3 - 70~75m (most likely around 72 or 73m) - Why? I don't believe that Sony can afford to release a PS4 until no earlier than 2013 due to development costs. That puts the PS3 at around 10.5m units sellthrough per year (averaged) until 2013. Not very high, but respectible. Certainly not as fast as the Wii Xbox 360 - 52.5m~57.5m (most likely around 54m-ish) - Why? It had a year advantage, and will pay off. Sales are increasing in Japan to give it around 2m or even 3m units by the end of it's life, and will easily win in the US. Europe/Other will increase over what the 1st Xbox did. Again, same reason it beats the wii: Longevity. I think MS will release the next system in 2011 or 2012 which gives it a life of 6.0+ years (give or take), or around 9m units sold per year. Wii - 47.5m~55m - Why? The Wii will be the fastest selling, certainly, but I seriously believe the reason Nintendo put out such a cheap console was because they didn't want to risk the money associated with a powerful system. The past 2 power-hungry Nintendo systems failed, costing Nintendo lots of extra R&D dollars. Now that Nintendo has a solidified winner, they will quickly replace the system in mid-2010, cutting off it's ability to beat the PS3. This means a 4.5 year lifespan, or around 12m units per year....A higher rate than the PS3 or 360 by a decent margin. I certainly believe that the Wii2 will be a FAR better selling system due to improved graphics (atleast enough to compete an extra year vs. the next generation systems). This is not a knock on Nintendo, or trying to be anti-Nintendo. It's obvious it'll sell the fastest and be the most profitable, but will die the quickest too. I also believe Nintendo will be able to transition the 2 systems VERY well and consumers won't notice, but I will. The issue I find is this: Many people that are analyzing the console race are thinking that the entire console WAR is summed up in the next 5 years. It's not. This generation is just one battle in the war. People are also too obsessed with numbers for the PS3/Wii/360. Just because I think the PS3 will sell the most for the generation means absolutely nothing if Nintendo makes billions of dollars and Sony loses billions of dollars. Does it matter if the PS3 sells the most units to Nintendo? No. If Nintendo is making $100 per system and sells 40-50m of those systems, thats $40 BILLION dollars in hardware PROFIT. Thats an ungodly amount of money. Nintendo, like Sony wants MONEY. PROFIT. The console sales don't matter, the money does. Every time Nintendo and Sony make a system sale, Sony loses, Nintendo gains. Only fanboys gain some sort of hapiness associated with system sales, when the fact is that Nintendo has already won in the fact they are making far more money than Sony and their buddies. MS will also profit, as they will have a huge percentage in the console market, and like Nintendo, is trying to make money via Live, which is their "secret weapon" in making money - MS is a software and online driven company, thats where they make their money. They have 2-4 million gold members right now, and will have far more. Imagine 20m gold users @ $4 a month......Thats 80 million dollars a month for MS....That has nothing to do with MS points sales, hardware sales or game sales.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
