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SeaDaVie on 15 July 2025
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zorg1000 said:
SeaDaVie said:

I don’t think this is correct at all, the PlayStation represented a complete revolution in the perception of video games. Millions of people were buying it, teenagers and older people, who had never played video games in their life. 

The NES —> SNES generation was basically flat with the leading platform actually selling less overall (62m->49m). The PlayStation and PlayStation 2 generations were the biggest growth periods ever experienced. People didn’t stop getting older, there were always new generations of kids growing old and becoming teens who played games, and being replaced with new kids, we’re now at a point where huge amount of the game playing demographs are like 30+ and 40+ people. However the overall market never significantly increased again.

Which part of what I said was incorrect? That kids who played NES/Genesis/SNES became teenagers & young adults in the mid-late 90s? Or that breakthroughs in graphics made the violence more realistic?

You bring up sales but ignore that the huge growth in console gaming during the PS1/PS2 era were mostly in developing regions.


NA

3rd Gen-~35 million

4th Gen-~45 million

5th Gen-~62 million

6th Gen-~85 million

JP

3rd Gen-~22 million 

4th Gen-~28 million

5th Gen-~33 million

6th Gen-~29 million

EU/RoW

3rd Gen-~18 million (most sales happened after 1990)

4th Gen-~22 million

5th Gen-~50 million

6th Gen-~100 million

As we can see, NA had steady growth every generation, before and during the PS1/PS2 era.

In Japan, there was steady growth before and during the PS1 era followed by a decline.

In Europe/RoW, yes there was huge growth during the PS1 era but there is a reason that I noted how most Gen 3 sales happened after 1990. Gen 3 & Gen 4 were in a way, a combined generation since most Gen 3 sales happened so late. If you break it down into 5 year increments rather than generations, such as 85-90, 91-95 96-00, 01-05, it shows a more steady transition.

For example, from Aug 1986-March 1995, Nintendo shipped a total of 15.01 million units of home console hardware in EU/RoW. 13.83 million of that was in April 1990-March 1995. I don’t have Sega exact figures but Master System have a slow start as well with most sales being after. The console market saw huge growth from the late 80s to the early 90s and that explosive growth continued in the late 90s and early 00s.

We can’t just ignore trends and market conditions.

Some of your numbers don’t look right:

NES+Master System in NA = 35.5m

SNES+Genesis in NA = 41.38m

PS1 + N64 + Saturn = 62m

 

That’s 16.6% growth into 49.8% growth. 

In Europe:

NES+Master System = 15.25M

SNES+Mega Drive = 16.54M

PS1 + N64 + Saturn = 38.54m

That’s 8.5% growth into 133% growth

The best selling system of the generation went 61.91m -> 49.1m -> 102.49m -> 160m

If you think that is just normal growth due to changing demographics then I don’t know what to say to you. The release of the PlayStation started the biggest growth period in the history of video games and completely changed the way video games were viewed by entire societies. I’m sorry if that doesn’t sit well with you because you prefer other companies.

Last edited by SeaDaVie - on 15 July 2025