.

[S.T.A.G.E.]

S.Peelman said:

*handing over grain of salt*

I feel the 8th generation is going to be a lot closer in sales than even the 7th generation. I don't see the market growing substantially anymore, even shrinking slightly, due the influence of more and more smart devices (even tv's themselves are able to do advanced things today), economic factors that will plague at least the first year of the generation and the fact that for the regular person, the PS3 and XBox360 they likely by now have are 'good enough'. Of course, 'real' gamers are, but I'm not convinced many 'casuals' that bought into the Kinect/Wii Motion craze, are jumping to buy new game systems.

The slow decline of the PlayStation brand in this past generation will likely continue, especially if Sony launches last. It's likely the PS4 will be 'inferior' to the XBox specs-wise, and because the latters rising popularity in the US, I see the next XBox win the generation. Nintendo will lose sales, but a lot of gamers will still get the WiiU because of it's exclusives.

Final count at the start of the 9th generation:

NXBox: 90m

WiiU: 75m

PS4: 70m

For the first month at leasy WiiU had the advantage of launching right before the holiday season, which ensures high numbers. Which it had. I see Microsoft launching around the same time, which mean it'll likely at least do similar numbers. I don't see enough PS4 rumours yet to determin wether or not Sony will release during holiday or rather in early 2014. If it's the latter, Sony automatically loses first month numbers. Regardless of the exclusives.

S.T.A.G.E. said:

Flanneryaug said:

Smartphones aren't a good excuse for the Vita's poor sales. The 3DS is still selling very well. Sony's problem is that they have become more irrelevant to people, so people aren't going to buy a Sony console just because it says Playstation on it.

Thats the most nonsensical thing I've ever heard. If Sony was irrelevant to people it wouldn't have sold more in its worst gen than Nintendos second best selling console (think about it). (..)

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the rest of your post, but in this context, this is an unfair comparison. The NES existed over 20 years ago, and the market was almost 4 times smaller than it is right now. The NES's share was about 63m out of a, say, 73m market. That's a marketshare bigger than even the PS2. Even though you are correct in saying the PS3 sold more in absolute numbers, relatively this was definitely not the case. It's best compared to inflation really.

But anyway, carry on!

The market doubled once Sony joined, theres no unfair comparison. Sony legitimized consoles as formidable videogame consoles in the media and everywhere else as legit multimedia tech. They were no longer toys. They increased the size of the market based on demand for those consoles and as Sony grew their marketshare shrank, plain and simple. Nintendos marketshare grew as they got the non-gamers to enjoy simple gaming, so are you going to downsell that by calling it inflation? No.