Shadow1980 said:
SWORDF1SH said:
Some good points
But we won't know how front loaded the sales are until a few years down the line. Being more front loaded doesn't mean amount of sales but how much sales in the first years of its life account for total sales in its lifetime. We won't get an answer until the gen is done or at least until we start to see a decline.
Well, here's how much of their total lifetime sales each major system attained in the U.S. by the end of their third full year (restricting it to the U.S. since it's the most complete data set):
SNES: 67.3%
Genesis: 31.6%
PS1: 48.8%
N64: 78.6%
PS2: 47.6%
Xbox: 82.6%
GC: 79.1%
360: 32.7%
PS3: 42.2%
Wii: 64.9%
Nintendo systems are consistently the most front-loaded. The Xbox was front-loaded but was also abandoned early as support shifted entirely to the 360 (sales dropped off YoY by nearly 40% in 2005 and evaporated almost entirely in 2006). The 360 & Genesis were the least front-loaded, but they had later than normal peaks. No PlayStation system has garnered more than half its lifetime sales in the U.S. before the end of its third full year. The PS4 has plenty of growing to do. It has an impending price cut in the West and plenty of exclusives to dole out. If it's curve is somewhat similar to the PS2's in terms of overall shape, we could easily see 35 million in the U.S. alone by the end of 2019 and probably over 40 million in Europe. After factoring in Japan and other regions, by time it's discontinued it should have passed 90 million if not 100M. As for the XBO, it should probably end up around 50M, maybe 60M tops globally.
I think the console user base has shrunk a lot since last gen and settling back to what we had in the 6th gen. This is due to the casuals gamers jumping onto the Wii bandwagon (also 360 and PS3 had a lot of casuals last gen but not on the scale of Wii) and not onto the Wii U (mobile gaming could be to blame). Something to that scale of influx of casual gamers we will probably not see this gen or ever again. So while the consoles collectively sold about 280M last gen, this gen we will be very lucky to see it hit 200M or even 150M.
I have my doubts about that "Blue Ocean" theory that posits that "casuals" and non-gamers were the primary market of the Wii, but that's for another discussion. Anyway, sales data suggests that the core console market has remained incredibly stable over the past 15 years, at least in the West (things aren't looking so hot in Japan, though the PS4 is doing well compared to the PS3). So, while we may see an end tally somewhere in the 170-180M range (assuming my projections are correct), that's still pretty damn good once you account for various confounding factors like the Wii.
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Some nice data there. I understand what you saying if you are looking at things historically but I can't see this gen being as long as gen 7. You actually have similar predictions as me 90-100M for PS4, 50M X1, 15 - 20M Wii U (depends on NX release) so I'm thinking about 160 - 170M total for all consoles. I do think this gen has shrunk compared to last but it shouldn't be too far away from gen 6 (200M?)
There is room for price cuts and sales increase and still endthe gen early. 2013 4.5M - 2014 14.5M - $350 this year 16M - $300 (Slim) 2016 17M - $250 2017 14M - $200 2018 12M - 2019 8M - 2020 4M.
