Soundwave said:
Shadow1980 said:
The market for home consoles arguably reached a saturation point of sorts in Gen 6, at least when it comes to conventional consoles. The PS3 & 360 had combined sales about the same as that of the PS2 & OXbox, and it's entirely possible that the PS4 & XBO, perhaps in large part due to how similar to the two systems are and how the XBO struggled early on and has failed to rebound and gain significant traction outside the U.S. & UK, fail to even reach that 180-190M mark. Both systems did not see any significant growth last year (in fact, they were down YoY in the U.S.), and may be passing their peaks if they haven't done so already. While evidence suggests that last generation there were quite a few household that had both a 360 and PS3, it's possible that the portion of gamers who owned both a PlayStation and Xbox system has declined this generation. I still think the PS4 will end up at around 100-110 million, while the XBO may end up at only half that, putting the Gen 8 market for conventional systems at only 165M, an approximately 13% drop from the roughly 190M of last gen. I do not think we will see a similar drop with the PS5 and Xbox 4, however.
Nintendo has been the wild card, going from 22 million units (GameCube) to 102 million (Wii) to less than 14 million (Wii U). Now the Switch is looking to see Nintendo rebound yet again. However, what generation the Switch belongs to is a contentious topic among many gamers. It's own successor is likely to arrive maybe at most three years (maybe only two) after the PS5 and Xbox 4 launch. The Switch's odd mid-gen launch will probably do more to prevent the cyclical rise and fall of the overall console market this go around than grow the market. It will hitting its peak no later than 2019, a point where the combined PS+Xbox market will be at its new nadir (assuming a 2020 launch for the PS5 & Xbox 4). It will meanwhile decline in sales while the PS5 & XBO start to gain steam, and the Switch successor will likely release before the PS5 & XB4 peak and will itself peak no more than a year or two after the PS5 & X4 do. For the entire period of 2017 to 2023, I think we'll see annual console sales hover in the 13.5 to 15 million range in the U.S., and 37-40M globally (the U.S. representing 35-40% of the global market).
Of course, I've excluded handhelds from this commentary so far. The 3DS, while a very successful system in its own right, represents a big drop from the absolutely massive DS, which was an absolute beast that, for whatever reason, far exceeded anyone's expectations and was a PS2-level success that will be hard to replicate. Likewise, the PSP was the first and only non-Nintendo handheld to achieve widespread mainstream success, something the Vita has completely and utterly failed to do. Between the 3DS and Vita, the handheld market shrunk from about 235M last gen to only about 80M so far.
The Switch is a hybrid system, and it's entirely possible that it will fully supplant the 3DS within a year or two. If so, then Nintendo is effectively putting all its eggs in one basket. The 3DS has so far pulled down something like 65 million units and still rising; it could still end up in the 75-80M range. Add the Wii U to that and you have roughly 90-95M units for Nintendo platforms released in the 2011-13 window that was the start of the current generation. The Switch could potentially do that, but if it's going to be carrying Nintendo all by its lonesome it's going to have to continue being very successful, something that's entirely possible, perhaps even guaranteed, if and when the next main series Pokemon game comes to the system. Even with just the Switch, Nintendo will likely not prove to be a hindrance for the overall hardware market in the coming years. While the 3DS, Vita, and Wii U collectively are responsible for the gen-over-gen decline from Gen 7 to Gen 8, I think the overall hardware market is starting to stabilize, and Nintendo being out of sync with Sony & MS will as mentioned make the overall hardware market less prone to large swings between zeniths and nadirs like it used to have (assuming they don't have another Wii U-level failure after the Switch, and MS & Sony don't do anything to really rock the status quo boat). |
Nintendo doesn't really care which generation they belong to.
I don't think there will be a "traditional" Switch successor in an old fashioned sense either, Switch will play by new rules, there will be a higher end Switch in 3 years ... yes I can see that, but the current Switch won't go anywhere.
I think Nintendo is going to adopt a high price tier/lower price tier 1-2 combo from here on out, which they basically are already employing with the current Switch and 3DS. They'll just replace 3DS with the current Switch once that becomes cheaper and then have a new higher end model after a few years (and probably more models in both tiers too).
|
