Well, as here is a sales-site and the new gen has started with the first combatant (WiiU) I think it is time to work with numbers and create graphs. Yay!

Well, global sales, the launch is aligned for each of the consoles. I have taken 100 weeks for the last gen from VGChartz and we can see how the WiiU is managing to hold itself against it. Note that PS3 launched later in Europe, this is clearly visible near week 20. Also the PS Vita had a later launch in europe and the US, also visible.

To get an even better picture, the weekly sales (Jan-Dec) of the first year of every console:

Again, notice the later european launch of the PS3 and the global launch of the PS Vita. Also the 3DS was launched early in the year, so I took that as first year.

At the moment the WiiU-sales are best comparable to PS Vita, that's why I have put up a gap-chart to track movement in this area. I may change the comparison in the gap-chart later, if other reference-consoles are more interesting as comparison.

WiiU put up a lead at launch, but lost some of it as Vita released in US and europe.

To get a better picture I also add the regions. It may take a while though, to collect the data for last-gen.

Starting off with the USA:

How will the WiiU go in the long-term?

Data: http://stuff.mnementh.de/vgchartz/ (use gnumeric to access it, it's free)

Take also a look on Superchunks thread. It makes similar comparisons but has different graphs and features tables.

Some things I learned about last-gen with these graphs.
First: I always thought PS3 was going more or less the way of the X360 in the beginning. As we can see on the LTD-graph, that is not true for the second year, PS3 starts to go much better than X360, although the first year look similar.
Second:On the weekly sales graph for the first year, we can see, that the PS3 was even going slightly worse as X360 - even after european launch. In week 27-30 it got better and PS3 started to sell above X360-niveau.

What I think of the WiiU? Well, so far it looks slightly worse than the Wii and better than X360/PS3. I somehow expect it to go long-term more along the lines of the PS3, but that is pure speculation so far.

Duplicate thread, i think so

Bookmarked. Please don't let this thread die.

Yes? I didn't saw one.

By the 100th week I expect the Wii U to be above the 360 and below the PS3 on this graph.

Oh yeah, and could you make the background in the graph a grid? It'd be easier to distinguish the actual numbers that way.

Anyway, great thread!

I disagree. It'll be close though.

I believe the WiiU will be above the 20m mark by the 100th week.

Nice thread. Bookmarked.