Pachter - Next gen is last gen; projected console sales figures

[archbrix]

Screamapillar said:

Mazty said:
IMO the Wii U won't reach 30 million, more likely 20, or less. 85 mill PS4's? Hard to say. It depends how badly people want to upgrade or if they are more bothered about phones and tablets, but I would say 70+ mill. As for the next-box if that goes down the route of a windows media centre that plays games, I'd say in the region of 50 mill give or take ~10 as no one likes a jack of all trades.

To put things into perspective... GameCube sold just under 22 million in seven years, and the system had absolutely no multimedia functions.  It was a pure game console.  With the types of mainstream applications that most of us find useful for everyday life built-in to Wii U, I don't see how it couldn't at least have some minor cross-over success like 360 had.  Free video chat, all major streaming services, etc.

Wii U will easily double the GameCube install base, and that's not such a bad thing.  That puts the Wii U 20 million ahead of GameCube, and 10 million ahead of N64, which even at 32 million was an extremely popular and successful game system.

+1 for common sense. :)