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Zekkyou on 18 September 2018
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Shadow1980 said: 

Zekkyou said:

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).

Gen 7 was ludicrously over-inflated. Nintendo far exceeded everyone's expectations thanks to the Wii and DS being runaway successes, and Sony surprised everyone by making the first (and only) successful handheld that wasn't a Nintendo system.

On the home console side, as I mentioned in a previous post all of the gen-over-gen losses have been on Nintendo's side thanks to the Wii U's failure. The Switch is making up for that, but the Switch is not and never was going to enjoy the same level of success as the Wii. Meanwhile, conventional consoles, as represented by PlayStation & Xbox, has remained an incredibly stable market. Combined PS4+XBO sales in the U.S. have stayed at over 9 million per year every year so far (excluding 2013 for obvious reasons), something their predecessors couldn't pull off.

-snip-

I appreciate the in-depth reply, but I don't think my comment really warrants it. My original comment to Miyamotoo was just a mild observation, not an in-depth analysis and argument. I'm aware of why the 7th gen saw such growth, why it subsequently lost most of it (anyone whose been a member here for more than a few years is likley to be well versed on both topics), and why the PS4 has ultimately been unremarkable in NA. The end result is still unremarkable though, and within the narrow context that my comment was aimed at, I stand by what I said. While the PS4 and X1 have remained stable, they've done so in what i'd personally consider a much easier market.