Study shows why current-gen console owners chose a specific gaming device

[DonFerrari]

Shadow1980 said:

DonFerrari said:

And how does the secondary console have a curve of bigger sales in the beggining of the gen instead of the end and for quite a long time beat both together?

Maybe that wasn't the best way to put it, but I think the Wii did significantly increase the number of multi-console homes. The Wii was something new, fresh and very inexpensive compared to the competition. It did well for several years being bought along with or instead of the 360 & PS3, but once it passed its peak and entered terminal decline more and more gamers started going back to more conventional consoles that offered the big AAA experiences the Wii lacked. Hence the delayed peaks of the 360 & PS3 as well as their slow combined growth from 2007-2010. The PS3 & 360 were unique in that they had such delayed peaks (the Genesis was the only other system to peak past its third full year, but that's because of Nintendo's de facto monopoly from 1985-1990). The only explanation for this is if sales of the two were depressed by the Wii, and Wii couldn't depress their sales if it were being bought mostly by non-gamers. The Nielsen study does show that PS4 & XBO owners had not only high ownership rates of the PS3 & 360, but also of the Wii, which does show that of the current eighth-gen install base the vast majority of them owned a Wii. There almost certainly was a non-trivial periphery demographic (i.e., non-gamers) for the Wii, but I believe the majority of Wii sales were by gamers. The data just doesn't make sense otherwise.

I agree that Wii have been the secondary console for a lot of people and probably not only inflated wii first years (dampening a little PS3/X360, but strange to buy the secondary console before the main) but also sustained the sales a little more on the end-life. But we can't clearly decide on how much it impacted... and from these numbers of Nilsen I don't see how to infer most 8th gen users had Wii.