Console Market not contracting, becoming more focused

[hunter_alien]

Mummelmann said:

This development towards paying for every scrap of gaming and needing paid subscriptions to get the most out of your software, is not generally good for consumers. It's an adaptive model that came as a response to the market branching out and production costs rising steadily in the past decade or so, and it's costing you and me a lot more, sometimes for inferior experiences at that. Not to mention the prevalence of huge technical and security issues since the PS3/360 era.
And there will be a general market contraction, you can call it becoming more focused if you choose, but the fact remains that the combined PS4 + One installed will likely be considerably smaller than the PS3 + 360 base, the same goes for overall software sales.
Gaming has grown, but console gaming has shrunk, there's a connection of course, the fringe customers have many options now and consoles are actually less streamlined than they used to be in the PS2 era.

The market has evolved but the thread title is downright false; the console market is contracting, not only will it be smaller than in the 7th gen by a huge measure, but even if you take away the convenience segment consumers for the Wii user base, even the 6th gen is a lot bigger, even bigger than the 7th gen.
The console market is contracting, no amount of semantics will change that, but I agree with the overall message of the OP, even if the thread title is faulty.

But you also have to take into account how long the 7th generation was in comparison tot his one. The 7th gen was IMO a standout generation that in its form will be hard to reproduvced if ever. We practically had almost 2 generation in one after the HD twins decided to adopt the motion gaming gimmicks as their own.

Add to it the fact that the systems themselves where far more powerfull at launch in comparison to PCs, than todays consoles, so they could last longer on the market, and it starts to become obvious that the 7th generation is by no means the norm that was set or which after a generation should be judged.

Yes, the things you can buy with the same ammount of money then what you could during the 6th gen, is a smaller number, but lets be honest, with the current service-oriented approach to console gaming is pretty hard to really grasp just how much money they actually make. Even if big publishers have fallen there are far more people working currently in the console industry then any generation before.