USA household saturation point

[binary solo]

What's your guess about the number of households in the USA with at least one current gen gaming console, and where do you think the is saturation point?

Roughly guessing VGC estimates 80% of Americas' sales is USA, so that's 58.24 million consoles between Wii, 360 and PS3. At an even wilder guess I'm picking that multi-plat houses probably reduce that number by around 10%, and then there's probably another 10% for re-buys (broken 360s and PS3s, and the slims) and people having 2 of the same console. So I'm thinking the number of households with at least one console is about 45-46 million.

According to the 2008 figures there were 129 million housing units in the USA. I dunno what the annual growth rate is, but It's probably safe to guess the number is around 130 million.

So the attach rate could currently be about 35%. 2009 saw 16.8 million current gen consoles sold, that's 13% of the number of households in the USA. It's likely that with the duplications factored in the actual attach rate growth for the year was less than 10%, but still if we think through the rest of 2010 we'll see another 6% of households in the USA getting their first current gen gaming console that'll put the attach rate up to 40%.

Surely we're well over half way to saturation in the USA at this stage, we're probably at 60-65% saturation. So it means pretty soon sales of current gen consoles will be existing owners either buying replacement or 2nd consoles of the same make, or buying one of the consoles they don't already have.

There are many more households in EMEAA than USA, and many economies are growing fast in EMEAA so that the potential market in EMEAA keeps expanding. So saturation will be reached much sooner in the USA than EMEAA. I think the Japan household attach rate is less than 30%, so again I think USA saturation will be reached before Japan saturation.

I think in 2 year's time (end of 2012) the USA household attach rate will be nearly maxed out and there will be very little any of the big 3 can do to keep sales momentum going. Even with sub $200 PS3, and 360 elite, and a $100 Wii and 360 Arcade, at that stage sales will be dropping off fast and a new console generation will be upon us.

No 10-year strategy for PS3 in USA, but it could stretch to 10 years in the ever expanding markets of EMEAA, just like how PS2 is still selling strongly in MEAA. In fact all 3 could go for 10 years in MEAA given all 3 combined LTDs still barely add up to half of PS2's LTD, and PS2 is still selling competitively with the current gen units.