Shadow1980 said:
ChudStudly said:
Exactly. Been saying this for a long time. People think market contraction is bad thing when it's anything but. The console market is fine. It ain't going nowhere.
Plus, people freaking out over sub100k sales in a consoles first summer cycle makes me wanna scream.
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It's also worth pointing out that in launch-aligned terms, the PS4, XBO, and Wii U sold a combined 1,828,000 units during their respective first winter quarters (Q1 of this year for the PS4 & XBO, Q1 '13 for the Wii U). For the 360, PS3, and Wii, the total was 2,134,000 while for the PS2, Xbox, and GC it was 1,682,000. Not too shabby for the current generation considering the Wii was hot, hot, hot! The current quarter isn't looking too good compared to the others, however, but combined aligned first Q1+Q2 sales don't look too bad.
If you want to just go by non-aligned years, it favors the current generation even more. The PS2 and Dreamcast were the only sixth-gen systems on the market in the first half of 2001. The Dreamcast sold somewhere between 350k to 400k in the first quarter of that year while the PS2 pulled about 1028k according to the only source of Q1 '01 sales I could find. That's a total of around 1400k, give or take. Q2 was even worse, as they sold somewhere around 1100k to 1200k combined. The 360 was the only new seventh-gen system on the market for the first three quarters of 2006, yet it pulled 603k in Q1 2006 and 793k in Q2. Meanwhile, in Q1 of this year ninth-gen systems sold a combined 1839k, and as mentioned they appear to be on track to pull upwards of 1100k for Q2, putting the tally of ninth-gen systems sold in the U.S in the first half of 2014 at nearly 3 million.
In any case, uptake of new systems is at a higher rate than before, with record launches in Q4 last year and a strong Q1 this year. In fact, last time around uptake of new systems was incredibly slow except for the Wii. The 360's sluggish launch (607k in Q4 2005) plus the 1396k it sold in the first half of 2006 showed that there was a decent but not huge rush to buy a shiny new next-gen system. The PS3 and 360 sold a combined 2011k in the first half of 2007, further reinforcing that view. Had the Wii only pulled GameCube-level sales (which a lot of analysts considered a distinct possibility before the system launched), the first half of 2007 might have seen only 2600-2700k units sold. Of course, there are other confounding factors to take into consideration. There's games, pricing, release timing, buzz/marketing, system shortages, etc., which can all affect a system's performance quarter to quarter, month to month.
Yes, the current spring quarter is considerably down from the winter quarter, but not only is the spring quarter almost always the weakest for any system, when you put everything into a historical context and understand all the things that can influence sales (e.g., the current generation had a huge launch and thus the likelihood of some considerable front-loading, the PS4 was supply limited during Q1 of this year, the XBO was overpriced and had little to distinguish it from the PS4 besides an accessory few wanted, the XBO also had a value-priced bundle containing a game that had a lot of hype and excitement surrounding it, and many games both multiplat and exclusive have been pushed back to 2015), you'll see that current sales aren't anything to be worried about. Sales of "conventional" systems (i.e., the PS4 and XBO) are in fact quite strong compared to the sales of other such systems (i.e., everything except the Wii) in the last three generations before this one.
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