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Farsala on 17 September 2018
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Zekkyou said:
Farsala said:

NA market hasn't really shrunk yet though, maybe soon in the future when we hit the evergreen years of 360+PS3. If we count NS+ Wii U years then surely they can match the Wii. PS4+XB1 as pointed out in the chart is 8m ahead of PS3+360, so technically NS+ Wii U only has to be 8m below it. Even then I suppose the Wii did explode, but it was quite the anomaly.

What might appear to be shrunk is the non holiday months, which is made up during the holidays of course. But we still had a few monster PS4 months.

I was referring to the NA console market as a whole (so home + handheld). The market the Wii opened up largely left, and handhelds were nuked from orbit. Despite what should be ideal factors for a market leader, the PS4 hasn't exactly set NA on fire. 

As Shadow's bottom graph shows, the overall console market was heavily down. Even now it's nowhere near the peaks of the 7th gen, but the combined effect of the Switch's success and the PS4 and X1 growing despite the added competition has at least shifted things back up.

My point was largely aimed at how much the 7th gen was able to expand the console market, and how poorly the 8th gen capitalised on it (though it's debatable how much they could have done in the face of the oncoming mobile and PC storm).

Handhelds and Wii  did well but mostly in just unit sales after all. The console market is much more healthy with very few closures compared to those days.I am sure Sony MS and NIntendo could have been A LOT more liberal with their price cuts ex: $99 Vita, Wii U, $149 PS4, XB1, Switch and gotten more unit sales. But that would mean much less revenue and less healthy market like in the 7th gen.

While the PS2, Wii, DS, PSP, PS3, 360 all had good unit sales, they didn't exactly lead to more profits like most video game companies are finding now.