The one thing that is certain is that my dick is shrinking at an alarming rate. I suspect TV radiation is finally catching up to my beautiful package.

only because of the record breaking launch, if you look at the weekly charts the 360 was doing a lot better from january to april (2006) than the X1 for the comparative period. Both Nintendo and Microsoft release failures and now the gaming industry is doomed!!

Well the X1 outsold 360 in March. The gen is young.

You may interpretate isolated months numbers as you wish. However, just take a look at Vgcharts comparisons between years and you´ll see that the trend still continues.

A single example: year-to-date total console sales (same periods covered).2009: 17millions;  2010: 15 million;  2011:  14,3 million;  2012: 12,5 million; 2013: 11 million; 2014: 10,3 millions:    http://www.vgchartz.com/article/251592/2014-year-on-year-sales-and-market-share-update-to-april-12th/

Some major retailers, like Gamestop, already announced they´re changing their focus from videogames to phones and tablets, due to this pattern. Investitors are careful, waiting for some point of stability on this.

Making the right assumptins, you can. For example, it's easy to perceive the 7th generation sold significantly more the the 6th because of the Wii, which has appealed to a different audience and thus it has enlarged the market. It's also easy to understand that PS3 and X360 appeal to the same audience so the losses of one were the winnings of the other. Same thing for the 8th gen. The market will shrink because there is no console to appeal to a different audience anymore (WiiU has failed on that). PS4 and XOne are, like their predecessors, substitutes of each other. Therefore, it's a mistake to predict PS4 will sell extremely well without XOne to sell poorly. If PS4 sells like PS2, XOne will most probably sell like Xbox. Will it sell more, will it sell less? That is better perceived looking at the size of the market, which can only be done looking at the aggregate values. One cannot pull consumers out of thin air. The market is the market (the demand is what it is). For one to sell more, the others will have to sell less. Even with the Wii that was true. PS3 and X360 got their peak in the 5th year (unlike any other consoles before, which usually have their peak in the 2nd year) because of the Wii's premature death.

I don't have to look at how each console is performing individually. I know that, if XOne sells more than X360, PS4 won't sell like PS2. I only have to look at the aggregated values and take into account relevant factors (like Wii in the 7th gen enlarging the market and WiiU in the 8th gen failing to do so).

^ maybe you see it different, but I read what you said and it validates what I said - you used qualitative factors about the 3 consoles to make a better estimate.

- It's easy to say Sony & MS have a similar market, so they will just split it.
- It's also easy to say Wii enlarged the market by appealing to a different audience.

This is why if you want to talk about the market shrinking, you have to split it at least into two components and analyze:

- Is the core market Sony & MS appeals to growing or shrinking?
- Is the new Wii audience growing or shrinking?

I think people say the market will fall from 260 Mill to 200 Mill to spite Sony & MS. Instead of admitting Wii U lost the most of the Wii's new temp audience, it feels better to just say "the market is shrinking".