So..Historical Saturation Theory Suggests

[TheSource]

For the household number...I noticed it was about 2.6 per year from 1985 to 2009 onward, so I just rounded them all up to 3.0 to make the math easier, as I don't think alot of single people are buying videogames (as they tend to be young, single or poor... or older)

I don't know that PS3/360 will slow Wii down that much. PS2 had to fight off PS1/N64/GBA early on, Xbox/GC mid-cycle, and then Wii/X360/DS/PS3 later on. Wii had to fight off X360, PS3, PS2, DS and is still trending faster than PS2 - and I doubt anyone would argue that PS1/N64/GBA were stronger competition than X360/PS3/PS2/DS.

Console ownership in the USA has gone something like this off the top of my head:

NES ~ 34m (4m may have gone to Canada and Latin America)  (247m People for 1989 Peak) 

Gen + SNES ~ 40m (258m People for peak in 1993)

PS1 + N64 + Sat ~ 52m (280m People for peak in 1998)

DC + PS2 + Xbox + GC ~77m  (287m People for peak in 2002)

PS3 + X360 + Wii currently: 56.9m  (307m People for peak in 2008)

 

8 Bit / USA Pop = 14%

16 Bit / USA Pop = 16%

32 & 64 Bit / USA Pop = 19%

128 Bit / USA Pop = 27%

HD & Wii / USA Pop = 19% LTD and rapidly growing...could reach ~34%

 

I don't see why Wii + PS3 + X360 can't reach 105m in the USA. Figure 7% growth from population alone over the last gen (307m/287m). Slow expansion of ages playing videogames...3%? Then you have the Wii lowering the barriers to entry for maybe 10% growth. Alot of people will have two or three systems this generation too if the motion control stuff works, and thats where the rest of the growth will be.

PS3 is looking like it will peak somewhere around 50-60% of where PS2 got in the USA, somewhere in the 4.3m-5.0m range. So you figure PS3 can get to half of PS2 figures (~23m), and X360 will make a run at 30m.

I think it will end up as something like this:

Game Purchasing Rates         Millions of Households        Tier  

          0.1-2/ Year                           50m                          Low Interest (prefers other entertainment) 

          2-4/ Year                              25m                          Medium Interest  (games are third or fourth favorite form of entertainment) 

          4-6/ Year                              12m                          High Interest (game are second or third favorite form of entertainment) 

          6-8/ Year                              5m                            Dedicated Gamer (Games are favorite form of entertainment) 

          8-10/ Year                            3m                            Highly Dedicated Gamer (Games are well above all other forms of entertainment)  

          10+/ Year                             2m                            Game-only-Gamer (Purchases almost no other forms of entertainment)

 

At the moment, the Wii attach rate is 8.6 in three years in the Americas by Nintendo's financial documents, so you have people buying about 2.8 games per year. The X360 attach rate is 8.8 through Dec - about 2.2 games per year. Most of the cross ownership I think will come in the four tiers above. People buying 10+ year will own at least two systems actively, while people buying in the other tiers will generally have two or more systems as well. Since there are 50+ highly rated games for all systems, I don't see a compelling reason for people below tier three to own more than one system as most people end up with ~10 games for a console over a period of 2-6 years. But if there are only 30 games per system you want and you play 8 per year, you'll own more than one system.