A Visual Look at Why the Industry Needs New Consoles

[TheSource]

I dug up some old data for the US (NPD) I had and adjusted it from Jan-Dec to April-March years starting with April 1994-March 1995 and running through April 2011-March 2012. The console cycle is still in full effect...and if tradition holds the year to March 2013 is going to be dogshit for US consoles compared to previous highs even with Wii U (it will only be on the market for like five months of the 12), because Wii, PS2, X360, and PS3 should all decline in that time frame against their March 2012 year numbers which were 6.9m X360, 4.4m PS3, 4.0m Wii, and maybe 0.2m for PS2. It isn't hard to imagine the March 2013 year being 5m X360s, 3.6m PS3s, 2.5m Wiis, 2m Wii U - way down on the current fiscal year.

End of SNES Era to End of PS1 Era:

 

Year Ending	Mar-95	Mar-96	Mar-97	Mar-98	Mar-99	Mar-00	Mar-01
Consoles	7.1	5.3	7.8	11.7	12.6	11.3	9.0

PS1 launched in late 1995, the March 1996 year, Saturn was in early 1995 but sold very badly. N64 launched in the March 1997 year. This era peaked in 1998 (the year to March 1999). It's likely the SNES era peaked in 1992 (FY March 1993) or 1993 (FY March 1994) and had already shrank for several years into 1994 / 1995 / 1996 which are the earliest years here. PS2 launched in the March 2001 year, but PS1 was bigger than PS2 in the March 2001 year.

PS2 Era:

 

Mar-02	Mar-03	Mar-04	Mar-05	Mar-06
13.0	16.5	13.5	12.1	10.3

GC / Xbox released in the March 2002 year. PS2 peaked in the March 2003 year - that was the peak of the cycle. Xbox actually peaked in 2004, with GC peaking in the year ending March 2004. PS2 had a peak over twice as high as its competitors though, so the three seperate peaks didn't prolong the generation. X360 launched in the March 2006 year after Microsoft somewhat prematurely killed off the original Xbox.

Wii Era:

 

Mar-07	Mar-08	Mar-09	Mar-10	Mar-11	Mar-12
12.8	18.5	21.2	20.1	18.7	15.6

Wii / PS3 launched in the year to March 2007. Wii sold 10.9m in the March 2009 year, that was the peak of the genration. Wii has already slowed from 11m to 4m over the past three years, so the industry is fairly likely to contract fairly substantially until there are three consoles to replace the four declining consoles.

During the second half of the following fiscal year, to March 2014 if the US industry still wants consoles that is (unlike say, Japan), there should be a massive recovery though, with X720 / PS4 / Wii U all growing as only PS3 / X360 will be seeing big declines.