HappySqurriel on 01 April 2007
mrstickball said:
Everyone defends the Wii sales in my thread(s) about how the Wii production will ramp up, sell insane, how the Wii is not selling like the N64 in the US (which it is, as the N64 sold out for the first 6-8 months).
I would think by now, with every generation we've seen, one thing is sure: You can't place your bets on any system and how well it does translating into how well it'll do the rest of it's life.
The N64 outsold the PS1 LTD for the first 2 years, then to only be beaten by 2:1 and 3:1 the next 3 years.
I think you need to consider a few things:
The N64 could actually be said to be pretty successful in North America, it sold 20 Million units in North America and was actually pretty close in sales to the Playstation until the PS2 was released (as of September 2000 it was 28 Million Playstations to 18 Million N64s). The N64's biggest failing was the Japaneese market being that they went from their high with the NES of 19 Million systems sales, to 17 Million for the SNES, and dropped to 5.5 Million for the N64; it could be argued that had it sold better in Japan it would have had a lot more key Japaneese third party support and sold better everywhere in the world. The Wii is selling really well in Japan ...
Now, the Playstation, Saturn and N64 generation is not (quite) like this generation because this is how their worldwide totals looked at certain moments in time:
March 1996: Playstation: 4.26M Saturn: 3.40M N64: 0
March 1997: Playstation: 13.50M Saturn:7.56M N64: 6.12M
March 1998: Playstation: 32.82M Saturn:8.50M N64: 16.14M
March 1999: Playstation: 54.42M Saturn:8.82M N64: 23.08M
If the Playstation, Saturn and N64 generation taught us anything it is that leads tend to get expanded upon as a generation progresses...
