What's your guess about the number of households in the USA with at least one current gen gaming console, and where do you think the is saturation point?

Roughly guessing VGC estimates 80% of Americas' sales is USA, so that's 58.24 million consoles between Wii, 360 and PS3. At an even wilder guess I'm picking that multi-plat houses probably reduce that number by around 10%, and then there's probably another 10% for re-buys (broken 360s and PS3s, and the slims) and people having 2 of the same console. So I'm thinking the number of households with at least one console is about 45-46 million.

According to the 2008 figures there were 129 million housing units in the USA. I dunno what the annual growth rate is, but It's probably safe to guess the number is around 130 million.

So the attach rate could currently be about 35%. 2009 saw 16.8 million current gen consoles sold, that's 13% of the number of households in the USA. It's likely that with the duplications factored in the actual attach rate growth for the year was less than 10%, but still if we think through the rest of 2010 we'll see another 6% of households in the USA getting their first current gen gaming console that'll put the attach rate up to 40%.

Surely we're well over half way to saturation in the USA at this stage, we're probably at 60-65% saturation. So it means pretty soon sales of current gen consoles will be existing owners either buying replacement or 2nd consoles of the same make, or buying one of the consoles they don't already have.

There are many more households in EMEAA than USA, and many economies are growing fast in EMEAA so that the potential market in EMEAA keeps expanding. So saturation will be reached much sooner in the USA than EMEAA. I think the Japan household attach rate is less than 30%, so again I think USA saturation will be reached before Japan saturation.

I think in 2 year's time (end of 2012) the USA household attach rate will be nearly maxed out and there will be very little any of the big 3 can do to keep sales momentum going. Even with sub $200 PS3, and 360 elite, and a $100 Wii and 360 Arcade, at that stage sales will be dropping off fast and a new console generation will be upon us.

No 10-year strategy for PS3 in USA, but it could stretch to 10 years in the ever expanding markets of EMEAA, just like how PS2 is still selling strongly in MEAA. In fact all 3 could go for 10 years in MEAA given all 3 combined LTDs still barely add up to half of PS2's LTD, and PS2 is still selling competitively with the current gen units.

According to NPD, it's far higher than that... 14% of Wii owners also have a PS3 and 26% also have an Xbox 360.  42% of PS3 owners also have a Wii, and 34% also have a 360.  42% of 360 owners also have a Wii, and 18% also have a PS3.

Wasn't it 87% for the US ?

i think you underestimate the number rebuys.  hell,this guy has 23 ps3s...

Well people still re-buy (lol @PS3 video) and consoles break. Theres always unique situations like mine where my Wife loves to play my 360 to the point I bought her one that way theres no fighting over the 360 anymore, so we own 2 and will be on our way buying a third (buying one of the re-designed Slim ones once mine breaks).

We're probably pretty near saturation from a software perspective. Less so from a hardware perspective as we have a lot of households with more than one console. For what its worth the PS2 also gets a lot of game time as well.

So by those figures ~3.5 million PS3's are in Wii homes and ~3 million PS3's are in 360 homes making it ~6.5 million PS3's are the 2nd (or 3rd) choice console for a household.

So that makes the number of households that consider PS3 to be the primary console is ~5.3 million. Wii /360 as 2nd (or 3rd) choice consoles among those houses accounts for ~2 million Wii's and ~1.5 million 360's.

So that leaves Wii homes with 360's and 360 homes with Wii's: 2nd/3rd choice 360's in Wii houses ~5.4 million; 2nd/3rd choice Wii's in 360 houses ~6 million.

So multi-console households currently take about ~21.4 million consoles out of the system. With only %ages in those figures it's impossible to know accurately the absolute number primary households for each console, but I think the multi-console factor is in the 20-25 million range.

I'll leave rebuys at about 10% (though could be higher), which makes about 32 million console owning households giving a household attach rate of ~25%. That gives a fair bit more life to sales in USA, probably pushing the saturation point out another year or 18 months. So 2013 is when current gen console sales are really going to tail off big time, regardless of price.

200mil