Will Wii offer more of what the Ps2 did or more of the DS?

[Avinash_Tyagi]

No you'll find I did not forget those effects, I simply chose not to overestimate their effect. Most gamers do not have multiple consoles, most people cannot afford to purchase multiple consoles. The "multiple console" effect can be assumed to be small for all intents and purposes. Furthermore, population growth in developed countries simply doesn't occur fast enough to have a material effect. Population growth is very slow and it simply cannot explain a signicant amount of the deviation between generations to suggest that the markets were not truly expanded. As for inflation and prices, low prices indicate an expansion of the market to previously untapped consumers. If you believe that this had a large effect then you are effectively saying that your own opinion is incorrect.

Yes population growth isn't that fast, but it affects the demographic that was being targeted by the videogame industry the most and we can see that it accounts for most of the growth between the NES and the PS perfectly, remember its about which age group is affected the most, the young, and while you can argue that multiple console ownership is small, its not as small as you seem to believe, and does play an affect on sales, and the N64/PS era was when it became a bigger factor, in addition you also failed to take into account that the NES also had competition just like the PS did (the gaming PCs, master system, even the arcades might be arguable as competitiors at that time)

 

I didn't consider the expansion in Europe as part of my initial analysis, however I will include it in the analysis that follows. For the record though, increasing global coverage is expanding the market.

Now for some numbers:

NES: US - 34m Jpn - 19.23m PAL - 8.56m

TOTAL: US - 34m Jpn - 19.23m PAL - 8.56m


SNES: US - 23.35m Jpn - 17.15m PAL - 8.58m

MD: US - 17.80m Jpn - 3.59m PAL - 9.36m

TOTAL: US - 41.15m Jpn - 20.74m PAL - 17.94m


PS: US - 40.78m Jpn - 21.59m PAL - 40.12m

N64: US - 20.63m Jpn - 5.55m PAL - 6.75m

SS: US - 1.87m Jpn - 5.74m PAL - 1.15

TOTAL: US - 63.28m Jpn - 32.88m PAL - 48.02m


It can be seen that over three generations all three major markets grew substantially. The first number represents overall consumer growth from the NES to the SNES/MD generation. The second number represents the consumer growth from the SNES/MD to the PS/N64/SS generation.

US: 21% growth; 53.78% growth

Jpn: 7.8% growth; 58.53% growth

PAL: 109.58% growth; 167.67% growth


Clearly we can see that the arrival of a third player, the Playstation, occurred around the same time as a massive increase in videogame consumption. The Playstation, as the dominant console of that generation, can be assumed to have played the largest role in expanding the three markets detailed above. Given the weight of the numbers, it appears unreasonable to suggest that the Playsation didn't expand the industry well beyond those who had typically played videogames.


EDIT: Sorry, put the US in place of what should be "Americas". Honest mistake, but the US does account for the majority of the sales in the "Americas" it was an easy mistake to make :)

 

Again your argument is flawed because you fail to take into account the competitors to the NES, you are trying to show growth to the market without taking into account gaming on the PC's for example, this is why your argument is flawed you seem to think that the NES launched in a Vacuum without any competition and that is why its numbers were so large when in fact nothing is farther from the truth, the market in 1985 was much larger than just the NES, however by the PS era the influence of gaming on PC's had declined