| spurgeonryan said: I would like it to stay around for selfish reasons. I know it is hurting 3DS in West, but I want it to eventually actually best the PS2. They should stop producing it in summer of 2014. Announce it at E3 and give it a proper send off. One last shipment as a bundle with collector skin. |
It's going to take it longer than 2014 to beat the PS2. First of all, we still don't have any real confirmation on if the PS2 has truly stopped shipping to places outside of Japan. This we will find out for sure when Sony releases its financials reports. And second, the DS only shipped 2.61M units in 2012. This was down ~60% from last year (6.47M for 2010), and 2011 was actually down ~67% from 2010 (19.46M for 2010). Even if the DS only falls another 50% this year, it will end up shipping only 1.31M units, which only puts the total at 154.98M. That still doesn't match the 155.1M for the PS2 from March 2012. So, even if the DS stayed on the market for the entire year of 2014, while only dropping another 50%, then that would put total sales to 155.76M. This beats the March 2012 number for the PS2, but definitely doesn't beat the ~157M-158M the PS2 is most likely at, now.
In other words, even if they were able to keep the DS on shelves until 2016 (with optimistic 50% drops each year), and the PS2 did actually stop shipping WW, then the DS would most likely either come up just short of the PS2 or tie with it. Of course, realistically they will discontinue it in 2014 at the latest.
