Let's take a look at the major console sales for the past couple of generations (numbers in millions of course):
3rd Gen:
NES: 62, Sega Master System: 12
4th Gen:
SNES: 49, Genesis: 30
5th Gen:
PS: 104, N64: 33, Saturn: 9
6th Gen:
PS2: 158, Xbox: 25, GC: 22, Dreamcast: 8
7th Gen:
Wii: 101, PS3: 83, 360: 81
8th Gen (so far):
PS4: 7.2, Wii U: 6.0, Xbone: 4.3
__________
As you can see from the sales data, clearly every generation seems to have one console that does much better than its competitors and outsells them by a rather large margin. 4th gen may have been somewhat close in competition but even then the gap between the SNES and Genesis is about 20 million, which is still relatively large. 7th gen is perhaps the most interesting since the PS360 are neck in neck and the PS3 LT sales might be close to Wii given the PS consoles' long legs, but the Wii dominated the other consoles throughout a good part of the gen and still has a 20+ million or so sales lead. Although it is quite early to say but In the current 8th gen the PS4 seems to be becoming the dominant console of choice. In the other gens, the NES, PS1 and PS2 have absolutely crushed the competition.
So the question is, why do you think this is the case? Why is it that one console seems to always take a massive sales lead over its competitors every gen?
