windbane on 10 May 2008
| Sky Render said: After all of the comments, I decided to do a bit more number crunching. One thing before we begin, though: you have to remember that sales do not all just happen at once, nor do they happen with an even distribution rate. There are three basic models for system sales you see: normal, market leader, and disruptor. Each has a general trend: Normal: sales start low, peak early, then drop off quickly Market Leader: sales start average, peak early, then drop off slowly Disruptor: sales start low, peak late, then drop off slowly The Game Boy followed the disruptor sales model, while the Game Gear followed the normal one. Ergo, the Game Gear's peak year was not very long after its release: around 1993 or 1994, in fact. By that point, most of its sales had been made, while the Game Boy was beginning its peak as well (in spite of a late start; disruptors always start slow and gain momentum). Since the disruptor sales model leads to trailing sales which don't die off fast, however, this meant that the Game Boy line had not yet sold anywhere near the volume percentage-wise of its lifetime sales as the Game Gear had. A reasonable estimate would be that the Game Boy was around 30 million units sold in 1994, while the Game Gear was close to 9 million. That puts it at about 23% Game Gear/77% Game Boy for hardware. Software-wise, the Game Boy was doing better than the Game Gear was, which would put the ratio closer to 20% Game Gear/80% Game Boy. So, checking the math, I concede that it's not a perfect parallel after all. The Game Gear did in fact not manage to match the Game Boy in its peak year at quite the same comparative level as the PSP has to the DS. |
Alright then. Well anyway, we all agree that the PSP isn't a failure so the inclusion of UMD didn't mess it up too much. I guess we can get back on topic now =)
