A little milestone that people have not noticed - the PS4 has outsold the NES

[killeryoshis]

Lawlight said:

killeryoshis said:

You are correct(Mostly. I don't know where you get the 300 million figure from). The reason you cannot compare the NES and PS4 directly is because you need to take account of population growth, market growth and new world markets.

For instance in 1990 the US population was 249.6 million. In 2017 it is 326 million. This is about a 76 million population increase.  This does not include other countries. 

You also have to take account that the NES had to revive a whole market (North America).  So the NES couldn't burst out of the gate selling gangbusters because no one took is seriously at first. The NES peaked in 1990 just when the SNES was about to come out in 1991. (So Nintendo had to start supporting the SNES)

Also when the NES came out half of Europe was under Soviet Union's control. (They were not keen letting people play video games. ) Also Nintendo didn't really have a Nintendo of Europe until 1990. So expansion was limited there for a bit. The PS4 was released in a lot more countries then the NES  as well giving PS4 an unfair advantage to the NES. 

Now I am not trying to say the PS4 isn't going to outsell the NES but you need to take the numbers into context instead of directly comparing them.  There is more to the story then bigger number beats smaller number.

Are you not missing a few circumstances here? I dunno, like MS entering the market in a big way or mobile and PC gaming growth?

You are right I am missing a few circumstances. The amount of games released on the PS4 is way higher than the NES recieved back in the day. Less games = less sales. 

Also PC gaming has always been around and growing. It could be argued that PC was a bigger threat back then as PC actually had exclusives that you will never find on consoles like Ultima and Wizardry. Also PC's were way more advance than anything the NES could do. I am talking about having huge open world games in 1985.  (Which were more in depth than anything the NES could munster.)  PCs were 16 bit while the outdated NES was 8 bit.  Almost every Western PC company avoided the NES because of it being outdated and harsh 3rd party restrictions. Source

Also Microsoft entering the gaming industry much as they spend billions of dollars trying to beak into the industry but can only sell in America and UK. I do not see a reason why I should take them in consideration as they don't impact the industry like population growth and openings of new markets. 

Also mobile gaming doesn't even effect Handhelds let alone big budget home console games.  Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20110603032017/http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/06/01/goo_3ds_survey/