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phenom08 on 22 September 2012
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binary solo said:
DanneSandin said:
binary solo said:
DanneSandin said:
@binary_solo: I don't think the PS base is anywhere near 60m, nor is Xbox's. They both had one very good selling point this gen: HD graphics. That and they had great 3rd party support. That's what sold the system to close to 70m gamers. If Nintendo only has a 20m base, do you really think PS360 has 60m each? No. =)

OP: I agree that if Nintendo plays this gen right, and the other two mess up Nintendo will win. If all consoles will have the same 3rd party support (which I think they'll have - see my sig for further info) I think there's a big chance of WiiU winning this gen.

Well if you look at my maths, and you see me saying that I reckon you can count 180 million consoles as having been sold already, then you see I think PS3 has a 60M base and 360 has something similar then that leaves 60M of my pre-sold consoles unsold. Clearly that's got to be Wii U. So I donb;t know where you get 20M for Wii U from.

Hahaha yeah I see now that I explained the part about 20m poorly. What I meant by that is that GameCube sold 20m, so that should be Nintendo's fan base. It makes me wonder why Sony, in less time, have manage to get a bigger fan base - but still not moving as much 1st party games as Nintendo... Or maybe I didn't understand what you were saying? Am I missing the point completely?

The "base" in the context I'm meaning are those people who are generally inclined to buy one console over the others. GCs 20M represent the Nintendo core: being those who will always buy Nintendo in good times and bad. It's possibly to lose a lot of the base if you screw up badly. It's not really possible to lose the core. Nintendo screwed up badly with GC so they pretty much lost all of their base. They got it back with Wii.

Sony established a large base because they sold a butt load of PS1s and PS2's. They sold more PS1's than any non-handheld Nintendo console, and then they went one better with PS2. By comparison Nintendo's best selling non-HH console before Wii was NEs at 61M. PS3 has sold more than NES by 5M units. And it looks like Wii won't beat out PS1. So PS3 has sold better than every non-HH Nintendo other than Wii, and Wii has sold worse than every non-HH PS console other than PS3. What does that tell us? The base for brand Playstation built up pretty rapidly over the course of 2 generations. The base for non-HH Nintendo cannot be said to be higher than Playstation on the basis of Wii's performance. It might be higher than PS if the first time ever console buyers who bought Wii can be consisdered part of Wii's new base. But that's far from certain. Why would a person who bought Wii for Wii Fit feel compelled to buy a Wii U? They have no particular brand loyalty to Nintendo or Wii. The evolution of fitness software on consoles is arguably on Kinect, so the Wii Fit demographic may have already gone to 360/Kinect. Or they may be more inclined to get 720/Kinect 2.0.

Estimating the base for each console brand is pretty much a guess on my part. But estimating the base will be connected in some way with the sales history of the brand. We have a 3 generation history for PS brand and it averages out to about 100 million per generation. But you've also got to look at the brand's low point when considering the base too, and the context of that low point. PS3 had a bad generation, at least until 2009. It was total doom and gloom with predictions of 10-15M lifetime sales. But in spite of that PS3 has managed to have a reasonable generation in terms of units sold. That suggests the brand's base is pretty close to PS3 sales. Not all of PS3's sales will be to its base, but most of them will be. 60M is optimistic for me perhaps, but 50M is very realistic for PS4 even if all Sony does is slightly change the controller to improve some ergonomics and of course produce a PS4 with the rumoured specs or thereabouts.

The Xbox base is the least discernable as it's got only 2 generations of information and they've established no pattern, and their first generation was rather lackluster, unlike PS. It's base might be 25M or it might be 50M. But at this point, because Xbox is so strong in USA (i.e. it has a solid base there now I think) and UK I think 50-60M is well and truly on for 720. So maybe I should express things in a range, like 50-60M for the 3 consoles and hence 150-180M consoles are pretty much pre-sold.

I stopped reading after this.