These numbers somewhat confirm my long standing fear that the USA market is in the long term turning away from Sony's systems. Check out how quickly hardware has changed in the 2000s for the USA market (for GBA, GC, Wii, DS, N64 for Nintendo, PS1, PS2, PSP, PS3 for Sony, Xbox, X360 for Microsoft)

                       2001        2002         2003        2004       2005     2006      2007       2008      2009     2010

Nint HW      7.2m         9.2m        11.1m     10.6m      8.5m    10.4m    15.8m   20.1m    20.8m     16.7m?

Sony HW      8.4m        10.6m      7.5m         5.4m       9.2m     8.4m     10.3m    9.9m      8.6m      6.3m?

Mic HW        1.4m       3.2m         3.1m         4.0m       2.8m     4.3m      4.6m     4.7m      4.8m       7.3m?

If you look at 2001-2003, the Nintendo figures are N64 / GC / GBA (they'd probably be a bit higher if you had GBC / GB hw too, but I don't). Sony's 2001-2004 figures are from only two systems - PS1 / PS2.  For 2004, GC / GBA  fell off and N64 was totally dead but DS made up some of the drop. For Sony, PS1 / PS2 both fell sharply in 2004 and Microsoft had its peak Xbox 1 year which hurt PS2. In 2005, GBA and GC fell further, and DS sold poorly. PSP did fairly well in 2005, PS2 rebounded, and PS1 declined - so it was a good year for Sony. Microsoft had a difficult transition year. In 2006, GBA, GC, Wii, and DS were all doing modest to good numbers. PS2 / PSP were still doing decent numbers. X360 was starting tot ake off.

The real transition happens in 2007 - Sony had in theory three active, viable systems on the market in 2007, but sold less systems then when it had only two viable systems in 2002. Same thing happened in 2008. In 2009 / 2010 PS2 and PSP have dropped off much more quickly than PS3 has risen. In 2010, it finally looks like PSP and PS2 have fallen to the point where Microsoft is now officially the second biggest player, for both hardware and software sold in the USA market.

I really don't see that changing any time soon - Microsoft doesn't make portables, and Wii is Wii - but with PSP and PS2 only likely to do 1.5m or so in 2011, Microsoft probably only has to sell 6m X360s in 2011 to beat Sony for hardware again - and thats likely doable. It doesn't look like PSP2 will be out by mid 2011, and we're likely two years or more away from PS4. So if Microsoft is to make permanent user base inroads, now is the time, given the PS2 userbase is all but disbanded and the PS3 is trending to be only half the PS2, or less in the USA market.

now that NPD is out, PS3's performance over Black Friday week is no longer undertracked by VGC only. Now it would be undertracked by both VGC and NPD.

Before Kinect I figured X360 would get to 30m - 33m anyway in the USA. With Kinect it will probably be close to 40m. The trick is, Pachter has said half the X360s sold in Nov were with Kinect bundled. So in that respect the Wii still dominates the "motion wars" from a user base perspective. When Nintendo added 1.27m Wiis, it added 1.27m users. When Microsoft added 1.37m users, it added 700k new X360 owners, for motion gaming, but it also transferred 800,000 existing customers to Kinect...and I don't know that the transfer is necessarily good for the existing Core market. Alot of publishers may be thinking in six months there is a 25m core X360 base, when it reality 3m-4m users, and perhaps some entire fan bases will move to Kinect only.

With Wii "new gamers" have seemed willing to jump only level up in gameplay complexity. No gaming to Wii Sports / Wii Fit. Wii Sports / Wii Fit to Mario Kart / Tiger Woods / Sports Active. So if Kinect is moving the core to new genres and bringing in new people, then simple to play content should do well pretty quickly, while the tradition X360 stuff begins to stagnate and decline as the rate of new core users dips below the number of core users shifting to Kinect primacy or Kinect exclusivity. For some Kinect users, X360 is essentially to become like PS2 was for new PS3 users in 2006-2007 - backwards compatable with Kinect

Before Kinect I figured X360 would get to 30m - 33m anyway in the USA. With Kinect it will probably be close to 40m. The trick is, Pachter has said half the X360s sold in Nov were with Kinect bundled. So in that respect the Wii still dominates the "motion wars" from a user base perspective. When Nintendo added 1.27m Wiis, it added 1.27m users. When Microsoft added 1.37m users, it added 700k new X360 owners, for motion gaming, but it also transferred 800,000 existing customers to Kinect...and I don't know that the transfer is necessarily good for the existing Core market. Alot of publishers may be thinking in six months there is a 25m core X360 base, when it reality 3m-4m users, and perhaps some entire fan bases will move to Kinect only.

With Wii "new gamers" have seemed willing to jump only level up in gameplay complexity. No gaming to Wii Sports / Wii Fit. Wii Sports / Wii Fit to Mario Kart / Tiger Woods / Sports Active. So if Kinect is moving the core to new genres and bringing in new people, then simple to play content should do well pretty quickly, while the tradition X360 stuff begins to stagnate and decline as the rate of new core users dips below the number of core users shifting to Kinect primacy or Kinect exclusivity. For some Kinect users, X360 is essentially to become like PS2 was for new PS3 users in 2006-2007 - backwards compatable with Kinect

Seece I have data and estimates for every major market in the world back to 1983 for Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Microsoft. When I was at my university I had free access to extensive business archives and was able to assemble all kinds of useful information. For instance, X360 even with Kinect may still end up doing less in a FY (for hw) than NES did in its best year. However, since the peak will last longer, it probably will get a bit higher than 62m lifetime.