In an attempt to learn a little bit about sales patterns, I made up a handy table showing the performance of each companies performance throughout the generations.
The relative difference is defined as the sales of the console, divided by its predecessor's sales
The absolute difference is the sales of the console, then subtract the sales of the predecessor
| Console | Relative Difference | Absolute Difference |
| NES | NA | 61.91 |
| SNES | 0.79 | -12.81 |
| N64 | 0.67 | -16.2 |
| GC | 0.66 | -11.16 |
| Wii | 2.12 | 24.32 |
| Master System | NA | 13 |
| Mega Drive (Genesis) | 2.23 | 16 |
| Saturn | 0.33 | -19.5 |
| Dreamcast | 1.12 | 1.1 |
| PS1 | NA | 102.49 |
| PS2 | 1.46 | 47.51* |
| PS3 | 0.13 | -130.29 |
| Xbox | NA | 24 |
| 360 | 1.15 | 3.65 |
Things that I notice
4 consoles had no predecessor
5 sold more than their direct predecessor
5 sold less than their direct predecessor
Currently the best improvements are Genesis for relative sales and PS1 for absolute.
The Wii must sell 48.7 million consoles to claim the title of best relative improvement, which it should do in February
The Wii must sell 124.24 million consoles to claim highest absolute improvement
The 360 should take the title of 2nd highest relative improvement (behind only the Wii), if it reaches 53.76 million units sold
The PS3 currently holds both absolute and relative loss records, with the Saturn taking 2nd worst for each.
The PS3 should be able to avoid the title of biggest relative loss, if it sells 51 million.
The PS3 needs to sell 130.51 million consoles to avoid having the largest drop in absolute terms
I assumed end of life sales of 150 million for the PS2. I have not put in assumptions about current consoles because that would be too hard to predict.
Data from here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles, except for current gen consoles, whose numbers were taken from www.vgchartz.com
Questions? comments?
