Old Analyst Prediction table for the 7th Generation. PS3/360/NRV (Wii)

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curl-6 said:

Reminds me of when Gamespot ran an article that Wii would win the 7th Gen sales race as an April Fools joke in 2006:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/april-fools-analyst-revolution-will-take-lead-in-2010/1100-6146958/

That's how convinced the gaming media was that Nintendo would lose, that just the possibility of them winning was considered joke material

Looks like that guy pranked himself.

PAOerfulone said:

I really get a kick out of seeing these old predictions and how off the market they were. Especially the Nintendoom analysts. (Pachter)

The funny thing is, this is almost exactly how the PS4/Xbox One/Wii U race panned out. 

Their basic (faulty) assumption is that the coming generation 7 would be a lot like Generation 6 but with XBox doing a little better.  People still make this terrible assumption today.  The automatic assumption is that the PS5 will do well simply because the PS4 did well.

I kind of think all of these analysts are overpaid, because it doesn't take much skill to predict that the near future will be similar to the recent past.  If they had seriously studied video game history, then they would know that sales performance is often quite different from one generation to the next.  Here is a quick breakdown of expectations right before the next iteration of systems was released:

1982 (before the crash) - Atari 5200 is going to be the successful successor to the Atari 2600. (nope)
1985 (before Gen 3 in NA) - Consoles were a fad and now all gamers have permanently switched to computers. (nope)
Late 80's (before Gen 4) - Nintendo is the favorite, but they need to watch electronics giant NEC as a serious threat.  (half right, SNES ended up on top, but Genesis was the real threat and not NEC.)

Mid 90's (before Gen 5) - Nintendo is the favorite, but the need to watch electronics giant Sony.  (half right, Playstation was a threat and it clobbered N64)
Late 90's (before Gen 6) - PS2 will have the easy win.  (Ding!  Expectations were actually right for the first time.)
Mid 2000's (before Gen 7) - PS3 is the favorite, but they need to watch tech giant Microsoft.  Nintendo will go third party soon. (heh, nope.  They were right about Microsoft being a threat, but dead wrong about everything else.)   

Early 2010's (before Gen 8) - Should be a close 3 way race.  (nope.)
Late 2016 (before the Switch) - Will be lucky if it does as well as the 3DS.  (heh, nope.)

Basically, the common wisdom is that the next generation wll always be like the current state of the market, although a large player entering the market can change things.  In making these assumptions, the analysis is usually wrong.  And yet analysts make these assumptions every single time.  This is why I am laughing to myself about everyone expecting the PS5 to do great.  It probably won't.  People are just seeing that the PS4 did well and so assume the PS5 will do well.  If history is any indication, the safe bet is against the PS5.