Predictions on the future of the consoles: Ben Heckendorn's take

[Sullla]

I was thinking of typing a long reply, but Stever89 has pretty much summed up everything I would say.

It's just a bad article. Not because I disagree with it (which I do), but because it contains numerous factual errors that could have been cleared up with a little bit of market research:

• Stating that Pokemon was a 1997 fad, despite the fact that Diamond/Pearl sold over 10m copies in the past year.
• Stating that no Wii game would ever sell 5m, despite the fact that one already has (Wii Play) and several more are clearly nearing the mark.
• Stating that "no AAA game has come out yet" in this generation. I think by any definition of the term, Halo and Mario Galaxy would have to count.
• Stating that the PS3 is "picking up steam" in Japan.
• Claiming that a new DS and new Wii will be out before the end of 2008. (Huh?)

As Sqrl just posted, the average gamer is vastly more ignorant of sales trends than those of us at VGChartz. That's a major reason why these kind of editorials look so bizarre to us; you can get away with this sort of biased argument on gamefaqs or Gamespot, or whatever - but it won't fly here. Folks are too knowledgeable. I had hoped that by now we'd stop seeing these FUD attacks on the Wii, but I guess not. We'll probably hear them right up until the next generation, at which point in time everyone will claim that they saw the Wii's success from the beginning.