"The Console Market is Shrinking" is a BS Statement

[Zod95]

ICStats said:

Zod95 said:

ICStats said:

Why lump sales together and miss all the detail behind the numbers?

Because it's hard to estimate the result of massive - large + slight. When you separate, you lose focus and you can easily be trapped in qualitative assessments that cannot be summed or compared.

I don't think we can estimate the total market, or the market shares of the consoles, without looking at the separate trends and factors affecting each console.

I'd love to see a quantitative model that would correclty predict Wii U will sell ~20 million less than Wii in the first 17 months.

I'm not saying let's estimate "massive - large + slight.".  Think of it as "outperform", "underperform", "market perform", terms used in analyst guidance.

Making the right assumptins, you can. For example, it's easy to perceive the 7th generation sold significantly more the the 6th because of the Wii, which has appealed to a different audience and thus it has enlarged the market. It's also easy to understand that PS3 and X360 appeal to the same audience so the losses of one were the winnings of the other. Same thing for the 8th gen. The market will shrink because there is no console to appeal to a different audience anymore (WiiU has failed on that). PS4 and XOne are, like their predecessors, substitutes of each other. Therefore, it's a mistake to predict PS4 will sell extremely well without XOne to sell poorly. If PS4 sells like PS2, XOne will most probably sell like Xbox. Will it sell more, will it sell less? That is better perceived looking at the size of the market, which can only be done looking at the aggregate values. One cannot pull consumers out of thin air. The market is the market (the demand is what it is). For one to sell more, the others will have to sell less. Even with the Wii that was true. PS3 and X360 got their peak in the 5th year (unlike any other consoles before, which usually have their peak in the 2nd year) because of the Wii's premature death.

I don't have to look at how each console is performing individually. I know that, if XOne sells more than X360, PS4 won't sell like PS2. I only have to look at the aggregated values and take into account relevant factors (like Wii in the 7th gen enlarging the market and WiiU in the 8th gen failing to do so).