First Pilot: Sales performance by manufacturer, Region: Europe
For my first study, I have assembled the sales per manufacturer, and separated home offerings from handheld offerings, and separated them by generation. Below is the graph.
*Master System data taken from Wikipedia
** Game Boy data includes Game Boy Color and was amortized linearly over gens 3 to 5 (lifespan of GB was 1989 to 2003)
Study:
Handhelds:
As you can see, handheld sales have been healthy from the get-go. Nintendo being the main provider of handheld offerings mostly up until gen 6 (most other offerings bar Game Gear did not contribute much to total sales in Europe), the handheld market really boomed in Europe as of the DS, and subsequently, but less significantly, the PSP.
Home offerings:
Prior to Gen 5, the European region was mostly split between Nintendo and SEGA, mostly 50-50, for both the NES and the SNES eras. In gen 5 (the PSX era), the European presence of main home consoles took a radical jump upwards, thanks to Sony. The jump provided by sony in gen 6 was of 36.91M units, while Nintendo provided a small 6.35M, and SEGA barely a million.
The Sony trend continues on in gen 6 with the PS2, with barely any competition from the GC, Xbox and DC. Finally, in gen 7, the situation turns around radically as Nintendo manages to obtain more than 40%, with record European sales of 31.16M. Microsoft makes a place for itself by selling 20.21M, versus 24M for Sony, still leading above MS.
It would seem that the headway made by Sony would have made room for competition to obtain newly created marketshare from gens 5 & 6.
Total:
Looking at the total sales the growth of the dedicated console market is tremendous. Below is the growth curve:
Hope you found this information and these graphs helpful. Have fun discussing below!
The reference data:
In table form (for copy-pasting - Quote post to copy paste the table):
| Platform | SEGA | Nintendo | Sony | Microsoft | Total | SEGA handhelds | Nintendo handhelds | Sony handhelds | Total | Grand Total |
| Gen 3 (NES era) | 6.8 | 8.3 | 15.1 | 3.23 | 13.33 | 16.56 | 31.66 | |||
| Gen 4 (SNES era) | 8.39 | 8.15 | 16.54 | 13.33 | 13.33 | 29.87 | ||||
| Gen 5 (PSX era) | 1.12 | 6.35 | 36.91 | 44.38 | 13.33 | 13.33 | 57.71 | |||
| Gen 6 (PS2 era) | 1.91 | 4.44 | 53.28 | 7.17 | 66.8 | 21.31 | 21.31 | 88.11 | ||
| Gen 7 (DS era) | 31.16 | 24.14 | 20.21 | 75.51 | 51.15 | 20.82 | 71.97 | 147.48 | ||
| Gen 8 (new era) | 4.48 | 0.29 | 4.77 | 4.77 |
