We won't know how much Nintendo declines from last generation until the Wii U has a solid library. They will decline some, most likely, because many casuals were never long-term customers to begin with.

With Sony and Microsoft, we'll just have to wait and see. I think they'll sell a combined amount that's comparable to this generation.

Both as they are intertwined. However, even without Nintendo it's slowly contracting. And without Nintendo's handhelds would be considered completely dead.

It's long been my opinion that tablets pose the greatest danger to Nintendo - stealing the casual market - but will slowly eat into Ms/Sony's market to. Which is why I was sooooo disappointed with Nintendo's focus on the gamepad. You can't get someone off a tablet with a gamepad. Not going to happen. Completely wrong response by Nintendo. They needed to go in the exact opposite direction or make a full-out Android tablet/gamepad.

Let's look at recent non-Nintendo sales.

Starting with MS, the Xbox 360 has declined from nearly 14m in the previous year to probably something a little above 10m this year.

With Sony, we all know about the massive success their new handheld has been. Their old handheld ain't doing so hot, either. As for their home consoles, the PS2, despite getting decent sales in recent years, has now been discontinued. The PS3 is doing alright, but, what with its significant yearly decline despite a hardware revision, you have to wonder how long that will last.

So overall, every non-Nintendo platform on the market, with the possible exception of the PS3, is demonstrating a substantial decline.

Yeah, it ain't just Nintendo.

Also, on the whole, the UK has become a much weaker market for Nintendo than anywhere else in the world. Just look at those software charts that came with the Nintendo financials. As such, UK numbers will be misleading for this kind of comparison.

If Nintendo was the primary cause for the initial explosion of the market in '06-'08, then they are surely the primary reason for the decline since. You have to give them credit for both, though. You can't just say Nintendo is the reason for the recent decline, and not explain that it's because they were all the reason for the unprecedented rise in the first place, years earlier.

If you look in the OP, the drops for PS360 are not big, once their successors arrive they'll fix their decline, their YoY drops are not as high as Nintendos.

It's too early for anything to matter. We gotta see 2013 through to it's completion to know anything.

^Leave your speculation out.

Probably in decline. Outside of the video game community the market is seen as pretty stale. Unless PS4 provides some sort of large innovation it too will suffer from crappy sales.

Wii was popular with the casual non gamers, were they'd take the Wii out when people come over and it would just sit there for the rest of the year. None of these people were commited to the Wii with WiiUs irrelevance as a result.

You realise that a new console generation is like a giant reset button, right? 12 months from now the PS4/Nextbox combo might have just a few hundred thousand units between them in the UK (assuming they both launch at the end of this year), and software releases on PS3/360 will already be massively drying up.

Do you think they can sell close to 1644k again in that circumstance next January?