When Will the PS4 Pass the WiiU in Lifetime Sales?

[Egann]

Osc89 said:

Egann said:

Here I go with a complicated prediction.

The PS4 will overtake the Wii U during the Christmas 2014 season as it becomes the superior standalone console. The Wii U will overtake the PS4 again some time between 2017 and 2019 as the Gen 8 consoles hit midlife and the Wii U demonstrates itself to be a superior support/ secondary console.

Unlikely, given this time period is pretty much when Nintendo will launch their next console.

If you assume that it would stay on the market exactly as long as the Wii, you would be right and its successor would launch in 2018, but if you assume as long as the 360, a new console's due out in 2020. In practice, both those figures are much too early for the market to bear. 

Sony will be keeping the PS4 out until 2023 (or at least they said that was their intent in their E3 press conference) and Microsoft is likely to keep the XB1 even longer. Launching hardware before 2020 is suicidally early. Things sort of depend on how the 3DS's successor does in the portable marketplace and if Nintendo can afford it, but it's better for Nintendo to eat a loss for a few years and develop a big launch library for their gen 9 console. The earliest launch I see as practical is two years before competition, or 2021.

And this assumes the home console industry isn't obsolete at this point. Eight years is a long time from now.