| TheSource said: One thing to remember with the Wii in predicting hw for NSMB to tie to is how long it has taken lesser machines to decline. N64/GC were still at 30% and 40% respectively of their peak fiscal year three fiscal years later and thats without significant third party support. April 1997-March 1998 N64: 9.42m April 2000-March 2001 N64: 2.85m N64: 225m SW Market LTD, 18 third party million sellers life time, only four of which cleared 2m. One of those topped 3m in 6 years. April 2002-March 2003 GC: 5.76m April 2005-March 2006 GC: 2.35m GC: 208m SW market LTD, 15 third party million sellers life time - only two of which cleared 2m in 5-6 years.
Wii: 26m peak (April 2008-March 2009) Wii Peak *35% in March 2012 Year... 9.1m Wiis shipped worldwide
I don't think it will decline that fast though. Through December 2009 we have something like this for Wii: Wii: ~516m SW market LTD (shipments - I'm estimating), 45 third party million sellers lifetime (VGC sellthrough), 10 of which topped 2m (~3/year). Five topped 3m, one has topped 5m...and this is in half the time N64/GC were on the market. So even when Zii, PS4, X720 are introduced, Wii should continue to see fairly ample support from third parties - slowing its declines. It isn't going to do 6m-18m-26m-20m-16m-12.8m-10.2m and then behave like N64 did and drop like a rock. The tail should be rather long as the fanbases for the successful third party companies will still be active on Wii. Rather than selling 27m from April 1997 to the end of its lifespan as N4 did after peaking at 9.4m in the first year Wii will probably decline more softly and add ~32m-36m starting from its last 10m+ year. |
I'm wondering then if the PS2 is a more comparable system to the Wii, sales wise, rather than to the N64 or GC.
PS2's sales in millions were as follows, starting with FY99, from April 1999 to March 2000 (source: http://www.sony.co.jp/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/hist_fy09_Q2.xls):
1.41 9.20 18.07 22.52 20.10 16.17 16.22 14.78 13.66 7.91
It's peak years were FY02 and FY03. Roughly half of its sales were from FY99 to FY03 (start to peak). If Wii does the same, that puts its lifetime sales to somewhere near 140 million.
If the Wii follows the above pattern, with it's sales percentage drops matching those of the PS2 after its last 20+ million year, and does 6 - 18 - 26 - 20 - 16 - 16 - 15 - 13 - 8 = 138 million.
Using your logic, if the Wii goes through 20% drops (6 - 18 - 26 - 20 - 16 - 13 - 10) and then does 32 million more, that would put it at 141 million.
Somehow I still don't find any of those calculations above to be believable...
Essay Pro