| TheSource said: The general trend isn't good though in Japan for consoles: Famicom - 19m (more if you include NEC's system) Super Famicom & Genesis - 20m PS1 & N64 & Saturn - 30m PS2 & GC & DC & Xbox - 30m Wii & PS3 & X360 - 18.5m to date - probably not going to reach 30m Pretty stable for the last 20 years. Why? Well look at the Japanese population in 1985 = 121m, vs. 1990 = 124m, 1995 = 126m, 2000 = 127m. 2005 = 128m, 2010 = 127m. The death rate is greater than the birth rate in Japan now - the country is shrinking. In theory though that means the country is getting younger too, which helps explain the portables, as for every one person born something like 1.2 people die (most of them older). Now look at the USA: NES - 34m (37m w/ master system) SNES & Genesis - 40m (more with Turbografx and others) PS1 & N64 & Saturn - 56m? PS2 & Xbox & GC & DC - 73m roughly by the time PS2 stops selling Wii & X360 & PS3 - Roughly 70m through 2010 and huge volumes will be sold in 2011 and 2012 at least. USA Pop in 2010 = 308m USA Pop in 2005 - about 295m USA Pop in 2000 = 281m USA Pop in 1995 = 263m USA Pop in 1990 = 249m USA Pop in 1985 = 238m The USA has 70m more people now than at the start of the NES generation, Japan only 7m more. Not surprisingly, USA console growth per generation is going to increase by about 70m from the NES era to the Wii era. Wii & X360 & PS3 could easily do 50-60m, 35-45m, 20-30m in the USA each. |
Thanks for the population growth figures, I was gonna google them but I wasn't interested enough.
I think the generation will last longer at least in Japan and they will reach 30m home consoles eventually. Japan can't afford higher production cost of WiiHD nor ps4 if they can't afford support the ps3. 3Ds and PSP2 will have to expand the market in that case and console gaming is gonna shrink unless the economy flips out of the blue.
