"The Console Market is Shrinking" is a BS Statement

[Zod95]

Scoobes said:

Zod95 said:

Scoobes said:

Zod95 said:

Scoobes said:

Front-loaded yet both X1 and PS4 are still selling much faster than their predecessors at the same point their respective life cycles. These are typically the slowest months of the year in sales regardless yet Sony are having trouble keeping up with demand.

And Gamecube shipments were well under 1 million by 2006, so it'd still end up lower than the 2013 total. If you actually add up the PS3 and 360 from last they're actually around 14 million so that's actually in keeping with the end of the previous gen.

The first full year is usually the transitional period (this year) where total growth is slow due to the decline of the older consoles. I'd expect to see significant growth in 2015 but I would still expect a decent amount of growth YOY. The PS4 is actually on track to sell similar numbers to the Wii in 2007 and the X1, despite what people are saying, is also selling well for a console's first year. Expect low numbers for PS3 and 360, but in keeping with the decline of the PS2 in 2007.

X1 and PS4 are the best selling consoles nowadays. Their predecessors weren't (in their respective time). It would be a very bad sign if X1 and PS4 weren't selling faster. That's why it's preferable to look at the aggregated values per year (to avoid these kind of traps in the reasoning).

Selling 100k-150k weekly, Sony is having trouble with demand? Even if that is true, do you think that should count as an argument to this market shrinking/expansion discussion?

1M GC + 14M PS2 + 11M 7th gen = 27M in 2006 = 27M in 2013. Lower how?

First full year is usually the "slow growth" period? Then why has 2007 sold so well in comparison to the previous year and even to 2013? This is very simple: if 2014 sells significantly less than 2007 (both are first full years), then there should be no doubt that the market is shrinking.

PS4 is selling at just under 1 million a month depending on production. Compared to 2007 it's pretty good. The Wii was doing similar numbers to PS4 whilst X1 and WiiU combined are doing similar number to PS3 and 360 in 2007. If the trend continues for the rest of the year then we'll see a similar YOY growth rate to that in 2006-2007 (so around 32 million home consoles by the end of the year). This is not including the effects exclusives and game releases may or may not have to each consoles sales vs 2007.

I honestly see this gen selling a lot better than last gen in the long-term. For one thing I see Sony and Microsoft supporting this gen for as long as possible like they did last gen. If that's the case then PS4 could see strong sales in its 4th-6th years unlike the Wii did last gen where Nintendo effectively stopped supporting it in terms of software after the fourth year on market. With X1 on course to outsell 360, this gen is still poised to grow.

Secondly, we have emerging markets which will slowly grow in significance as time goes on.

Then we also have micro  (Android) consoles cropping up. Any of them could potentially expand the console market well beyond the current 3 company dogma.

If you acknowledge this year will account for 32M consoles, which is far less than in 2007 (14M difference, it seems) then you must admit that the market is shrinking.

When you separate the values, you incur in a lot of fallacies. Now you are considering the Wii's premature death and disregarding the fact that PS3 and X360 improved their sales because of that. You think PS4 and X1 will present the same behaviour and, once they will be the market leaders, they will make the market to grow. That's insane. You can't pull clients out of thin air. Look at the aggregated values and see what's trully happening...or learn it the hard way as time goes by.

Emerging markets will grow, that's true, but they still won't be significant in this generation. And the general consumer's migration out of the console market may largely surpass that trend.

I don't want to consider "micro consoles" dominated by trash software as consoles. This videogame console market that we love is shrinking, that's all.

I'm not just seperating them for the sake of seperating them, I'm looking at the causes and trends behind the numbers and according to your graph 32 million consoles is about the same as 2007 and about the same YOY growth. You realise though, that both sides of the argument, whilst somewhat logical are essentially plucked out of "thin air". Your reasoning that PS3 and 360 numbers improved because of the decline of the Wii for instance, is tantamount to guesswork as you're completely ignoring the effect of marketing, improved software libraries and added console features.

The important factor is that there are currently more people gaming (not just consoles but all gaming devices) in 2014 than in 2006/2007. There's a huge potential market that the three can tap into if they market themselves correctly throughout the gen. Considering the PS4 is currently trending in-line with or better than the PS2 (albeit, not in Japan) and X1 is trending better than 360 (even though its released in less markets), even with few next-gen exclusives, so it's not a huge stretch to imagine them continuing throughout the gen.

Now that might not happen, a lot can happen in 6-7 years time, but the early trends suggest it'll be fine for the rest of the gen.

@ bolded

That's a pretty snobbish viewpoint and one that does no favours for the games industry. There are good games available on mobiles and if any of these micro consoles become popular, you can expect plenty of good games to be released for them. If we all took that line of thinking then next we'll be questioning whether we should include the Wii numbers considering it was filled with shovelware. A micro-console that helps expand the audience is still a console.

My graphic doesn't consider PS2, so you can count on 14M difference between 2007 and 2014 (by your logic). And that is a very significant decline.

Marketing, improved software libraries and added console features didn't prevent most of consoles (of the entire videogame history) to have their peak on the 2nd year and decline after that. PS3 and X360 had their peak on the 5th year. Don't you think that's odd (putting aside the Wii's premature death)? How could you explain that?

Then you talk about PS4 and XOne and forget about WiiU. I know it's not convinient (to whom is denying a shrinking market) to see the whole scenario but you need to see it. That's why I insist on the aggregated values. That way you can't just pick up what's best to take the conclusions you want.

I didn't say there are no good games for smartphones, just that it's not what we commonly see. And that's right: we should be questioning whether to include Wii numbers because it was not a console like the others, it did not continue the evolution of gaming (unlike the others) and it was dominated by shovelware (unlike the others). Actually, as far as I know, Wii was the first console in history to be launched with old tech. Now it's arguable whether to consider it inside of the market (as many stakeholders considered it as being on a different market) but to include smartphones it's out of question (at least for me). Next you want to consider Pocket Boy and tamagotchi. Please, I know where this leads to.