If you look at January - September hardware figures in the US, it looks like the market is in for a very shitty year overall compared to the last decade -

     Jan-Sept                 2012              2011                2010            2009            2008         2007

Wii+PS3+X360          5.3m               8.3m               8.8m            8.4m            9.5m         6.8m

More particularly, Wii is trending for maybe 2-2.2m, PS3 is only trending for 3-3.4m, and X360 is only trending for 4.3m to 4.8m. Wii & PS3 aren't going to get anywhere near 1 million in December - X360 probably will just barely top it.

Vita & 3DS are probably going to sell around 5m, with DS & PSP selling around 2m. So existing consoles should be around 10m (4.6m X360, 3.3m PS3, 2.1m WIi), with portables around 7m (3DS - 4.2m, DS - 1.8m, Vita - 1m, PSP - 0.2m). Wii U will add like another 1m - 1.5m. That's an incredibly shitty year for US hardware, 18m - 19m units of hardware. The market was at 34-35m in 2009 to 2010.

Everything is now declining at once - X360 topped out at 7.4m in 12 months, PS3 topped out at 5.0m in 12 months, Wii topped out at 10.9m in 12 months, DS topped out at 12.0m in 12 months, PSP topped out at 4m in 12 months, and 3DS / Vita are too small to offset these falls.

It's also looking increasingly unlikely that Wii or X360 will top PS2 in the US, Wii is only 15 months ahead of the PS2 pace now and a lot of that is going to melt away soon, since PS2 sold 1.1m in Dec 2007. X360 just got to 35m in the US in 83 months, PS2 only needed 74 months to get to 35m, and Wii did it in 53 Months. The main pont though is this -

From 2001 - 2011, the weakest total HW figure for the US is 18.2m. Whether or not 2012 is under that or not is an open question, but it's going to be nearly identical to the figure either way, and well below the 25.6m units of hw sold on average from 2001 to 2011, and half the highs seen in 2008-2009.

Shitty numbers.

Should we blame the Wii?

The decline this year is gonna be a pluarality on X360 - 2.5m down, vs. maybe 2m down for Wii. PS3 / DS will be down 1-2m too, plus DS and PSP are to be down.

I miss these kinds of articles. Seemed like I used to see a lot more of them. Anyway I guess the point is that this should be the nadir for the current generation, right? Next year with the growth of Wii U and the potential launch of either the next Xbox or Sony machine, plus the growth of 3DS and Vita there should be at least a minor rebound?

If MS cuts price it will have a gigantic November.

But thats not going to happen. It really is shocking how long its been since 360 had a price cut

Why cut when your so close to the end? Rake in the money as you move towards next gen. 

They are currently advertising a $50 price cut in Canada (excluding 4gb models)

Just terrible, I just thought of something. What was the average price of consoles last generation, as compared to now? 7 years after I believe Xbox and Gamecube were not even selling in main stores anymore. PS2 was probably around 150$ and now we got 250$ consoles.

Before people blame the consoles, I think the reason is much simpler -- handheld market is super weak right now.

The 3DS + Vita combined are lagging behind the GBA, let alone the DS + PSP (early years).

This is Nintendo's fault.

Microsoft and Sony took a piece of advice from motion controls did their own waggle thingy and prolonged the shelf life of consoles that should have been replaced last year.

PSVita isn't going anywhere and we'll see if 3DS can keep up the good pace given the tablets and smartphones arriving tsunami. The second one, mind you.