Wii worst year for sales already? really???

[dunno001]

Hrm... looking at numbers and seeing where I think things are going, I don't think it's going to be catastrophic. It's not going to be as good as last year, that's for sure, but I do think that Wii can move another 11 million by the end of the year. Remember that Nintendo seems have strong holidays, and gets some spurts seemingly out of nowhere. Here's what I'm seeing for all 3, though:

Wii: The peak year was 2008, though there was a nice resurgence for X-mas 2009. Unfortunately, Nintendo did not fully capitalize on this, and instead rode it out to today. I think 2010's numbers will be about equal to 2007's numbers when all is said and done. Nintendo's last shot at any resurgence would come from either doing several new colors (ala DS), or finding a way to make a Wii slim. And these will need to retail by June 2011. I can see Nintendo doing the colors... maybe... but unfortunately, for home consoles, Nintendo has always done any slimming way too late to be much more than a blip on the radar. (See: NES and SNES remakes.) Even if they do this, though, it's been in decline enough already to not be able to rehit the 2008 numbers. At best, with the new colors, 2011 may be about a million shy of 2009. Even after 2011, I think HD penetration will be high enough that numbers may go back to an even sharper decline than if they hadn't done new colors, but net sales will still be higher.

360: If MS had not done any intervention, 2008 would have been their peak year also. But they got their slim out at the perfect time. Sales had started their downturn, and they got the slim out just in time to reinvigorate sales, causing a new peak, which I think will be this year. Natal's launch I think will make 2011 about flat, almost actually creating a plateau effect. After 2011, sales will start to fall on a rather steep curve, as the system going into its 7th year will start to show some age.

PS3: Sony did their slim system with a different strategy: launch it at the peak to raise the peak more and extend it. Unfortunately, I do not think Sony's plan with plateauing sales with Move will work, and that will leave this year to be the PS3's peak. 2011 will only be down slightly from 2010, but it will start the turn. And I'm not sure how many more cards Sony has to play to stop the downward slope I see next starting next year. I do think the system has enough power and storage on the BR disk to get a gentler slope than the 360, though.