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illuminatus on 11 October 2008
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RolStoppable said:
illuminatus said:

1-3) All the historical evidence says that consoles which cost $599 or $499 or $349 are outside the mass market and of course don't sell as well as consoles for $249, $199, $99 regardless what is built or not built into them.

4) In the nearest MediaMarkt from here the Wii right now sells slower and the 360 sells faster than one year ago. I don't believe that Wiis live cycle will be longer than 360's. I think the 360 will have its strongest sales in the mid-2009 to end-2010 period while Wii's heydays end sometime next year.

1) Interesting interpretation, but I was thinking more along the lines of "the system that consistently outsells its competition does so for the rest of the generation".

2) a.k.a. 4): Well, that's one shop out of many.

Historical evidence shows that the winning system of a generation has the longest lifecycle which would be the Wii this time. Now you might say that the Wii is different because it's so underpowered compared to its competition, but 25 years ago the NES was in the same situation. Production of the machine was stopped in 2002, although it only sold until 1995 or so outside of Japan.

Historical evidence also shows that most consoles peak in their third year and it seems the same will hold true for the 360.

The situation we have with Wii, 360 and PS3 is not comparable with any console generation before. Just because the console prices differed for such a long time by so much. That was never before the case. The Wii is not necessarily the winning system. It won saleswise the first two years but the customers of the Wii mostly are people who never ever bought a console before. This generation is not comparable to the ones before. Nobody can say how many Wiis will be sold in 2009 and 2010. I think Wii never again will sell as many units as it sold in the first 2 years.