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Intrinsic on 01 August 2019
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zorg1000 said:
Intrinsic said:

All that really shows i as you mention, the handheld market died off. 7th gen had 230M sales for handhelds alone for crying out loud. But what's funny is that that market actually expanded, it just expanded into an area we don't track... smart devices phones and tablets. Like which kid doesn't have a $50 amazon tablet these days that does way more for them than a handheld device ever could.

If you look at the home console in the 8th gen, however, you will notice that the home console market has actually grown from the 7th gen to the 8th gen, 276M to 298M,  and that growth is likely to happen in a shorter period of time too.

It gets a little tricky comparing 7th to 8th gen home consoles.

PS3+360+Wii=~275m

PS4+XBO+Wii U=~200m

Do we include Switch with 8th gen or will it be 9th gen? Also how do we classify it as solely a home console when its handheld aspect is a huge selling point and has a portable only sku on the horizon?

With regards to switch?

  1. It's an 8th gen console. Primarily because it shares its library with other 8th gen consoles. And this will be more evident when the 9th gen comes along and people see that when the PS4/XB1 stop getting 9th gen ports/cross-gen games, so will the Switch. Why compare it to 9th gen consoles if the majority of its multiplat titles are from the 8th gen. 

    I am willing to be pleasantly surprised though and my theory proved wrong if 2+ years into the 9th gen the Switch still gets 9th gen games while the PS4/XB1 stop getting them.

  2. As it has been drummed into our collective skulls, the Switch isn't a home console or a handheld... its both. So we have to count it as both. We either just group it with home consoles, or with handhelds or count it twice for each category. Now personally I always felt it was just a handheld that could be plugged into a TV (and had my head chewed off for suggesting so) and one could argue that Nintendo has kinda confirmed as much with the new dockless SKU being released soon. But I am willing to bet that shortly after that SKU is released Nintendo will make a $60 USB C to HDMI cable available to plug that handheld into a TV too.