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potato_hamster on 04 January 2017
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zorg1000 said:
potato_hamster said:

Just look at how Nintendo's grip on the gaming industry has faded over the years. They went from powerhouse to an after thought. We now have a generation that has grown up  Their fanbase is dwindling. Before the release of the playstation, there were over 150 million people playing Super Nintendos and Game Boys. Today the Wii U and 3DS have sold less than 75 million combined. Nintendo is trying to catch lightning in a bottle twice with the Nintendo Switch and is hoping beyond hope that the Switch becomes a fad like the Wii did. Because if it doesn't. If the Switch only sells Wii U to Gamecube levels, I would be shocked if Nintendo's shareholders allow them to make another console, and that would be a shame.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=701305

You might want to go over your numbers again, as of March 1995 (PS1 launched in late 94 in Japan & late 95 in the West) SNES+Gameboy had shipped roughly 80 million units. SNES was about 4 years old and Gameboy about 6 years old so basically the same age as Wii U & 3DS currently.

Here are the hardware totals every 5 years since FY90 (when they started the April-March setup)

April 1990 to March 1995-99.57 million

April 1995 to March 2000-97.06 million

April 2000 to March 2005-118.07 million

April 2005 to March 2010-209.60 million

April 2010 to March 2015-117.30 million

April 2015 to March 2017-18.96 million (based on current fiscal year projections)

Nintendo has been incredibly consistent for the last 25 years with the exception of a 5 year period of massive growth, a period which you just called a fad.

They have had a few rough years recently with Wii U failing to take off and 3DS sales declining but thats really no different than the rough patch they had in the mid-90s when GB & SNES were declining and N64 & Pokemon hadn't released yet to boost annual hardware sales.

Wow. That's a classic case of skewing the numbers to make what your selling look better. I love how you group Nintendo's sales into arbitrary 5 year periods, and mash handheld sales into home console sales so that the sales of Nintendo's more successful consoles are spread out over multiple 5 year periods to mask the fact that console-to-console sales have a steady and consistent decline.

Look we all know that Nintendo's Gameboy sales were actually backloaded, and we all know Nintendo saw great sales out of the DS, the Wii. It doesn't change the fact that if you take the year-on-year sales separated by console it again becomes apparent what I'm talking about.

But it's cool. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

I'll take a look at your 80 million figure later. I get closer to 90 million going by my numbers, but I probably should have clarified I didn't mean literally on the release date, I meant more of the time Playstation really started to take traction, which to me is after the release of Final Fantasy VII (1997-1998) - that really seemed to be the point the tide really started to turn away from Nintendo being the console of choice for the average gamer.