| The_Liquid_Laser said: It's normal for a console to increase in sales in it's second year after release. PS2 sales peaked in 2002. Both Gamecube and XBox sales were significantly up YoY in 2002 as well. It's not the percentage increase that matters. It's absolute sales. Your argument would say that PS2 was not competing against Gamecube or XBox because they all had YoY increases at the same time. (Clearly this is a nonsense argument.) My argument says that Wii was dominating PS3 and XBox360 in 2008 just like PS2 was dominating the other two consoles in 2002. The Wii, during its first few years, was selling just like every dominant console sells, and it's competitors were selling much lower as second and third place consoles usually do. The difference is that after a few years the Wii sales dramatically increased. When that happened the other two consoles got a sales boost. That is competition. That is how competition works. High sales of one console correlates with lower sales in another and vice versa. |
Are you not aware of when GC/XB released? They launched in holiday 2001 so 2002 was their first year.
Again, you are confusing correlation with causation. 360 was far outpacing its predecessor so it makes no sense to say Wii was affecting its sales. PS3 launched at $599 and took a few years to get down to mass market price.
PS/XB consoles are direct competitors, they compete primarily for the 13-35 year old male that plays shooter, sports, racing, action games and they go back and forth trying to one up each other with online services and multimedia functions.
PS2 (157m)+XB (25m)=182 million
PS3 (77m)+360 (76m)=173 million
PS4 (~125m)+XBO (~50m)=175 million
For three generations, spanning ~20 years, these two have been fighting over basically the same subset of gamers and their sales rise/fall depending on the other.
Wii & Nintendo consoles in general play almost no part in PS/XB sales.
When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.
