I was expecting to be hearing complaints from Sony fans that the PS3 totals weren't high enough. Instead, I'm besieged by Nintendo fans who think that a 35% increase for Wii sales, with over 22m sold next year, is a lowball estimate. I think some of you are still caught up in the holiday sales fever a bit...
Erik Aston said:
Check DS sales.
2004 (late year launch): 2.84 M
2005: 11.59M
2006: 21.18M (82% increase)
2007: around 30M (LTD after 2006 only 35.61)
Yes, giant leaps in sales DO occur even after things are "set" in the console war.
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This is a fair point, and something I did consider. Let me explain in a little bit more detail. I wasn't kidding when I said that consoles generally don't increase their sales all that much after appearing on the market and having their sales trends established. I can think of only three times when a geniune seismic shift occured: in 1991, when the Sega Genesis took off in the American market, in 1995/96 when the Sony Playstation began to establish itself, and the performance of the DS in 2006, noted above. Let's cover each of them in a little more detail.
Sega's Megadrive console never really did much in Japan, and the American version (Genesis) didn't fare very well in its first year (1990) against Nintendo's monopolistic NES. But in 1991, Sega jumpstarted sales through a combination of its new aggressive marketing campaign and the debut of Sonic the Hedgehog. The Genesis went from a bit player in the market to a major competitor, and the stage was set for the lengthy showdown in America between the SNES and Genesis.
Sony's Playstation was a new entrant into the gaming market in 1994, and struggled to make much headway initially in 1995. It was only at the end of that year that Sony was able to line up some higher quality third party titles and begin to take advantage of the major ongoing gaffes from Nintendo and Sega. Sales took off in the 1995 holiday period and then dominated 1996, leaving the Saturn in the dust and leaving the N64 stillborn before it even launched.
In each of these two cases, yes, we have a console selling at a much higher rate in year 2 compared to year 1. But that's because in each case, these systems were released at the very beginning of a console generation, when things were not yet determined. In short, the market trends had not yet been established, and it wasn't until two full years had passed that we could see the true potential of each system. The staggered launches of older systems (often debuting a full year earlier in Japan than America/Europe) also makes such comparisons difficult.
With the DS, we see something similar. Like the Genesis and Playstation, the handheld was a late bloomer. Even Nintendo wasn't sure it was going to succeed, which is why it kept the Gameboy Advance supported at the same time. The DS sold well enough in 2005, but it wasn't until 2006 that it really took off with hits like Nintendogs, Brain Training, and New Super Mario Brothers. And yes, the DS saw major sales growth in 2006, but it achieved that by pulling many of the sales away from the GBA:
2004: GBA (15.4m) DS (2.8m)
2005: GBA (8.3m) DS (11.4m)
2006: GBA (4.3m) DS (20.6m)
My point is the same as above. It wasn't until 2006 that the market trend for DS sales was firmly established. Go back and look at the charts; the DS and PSP run at about the same pace all through 2005, then in 2006 the DS just explodes past it and takes over. It's therefore not until 2006 that we could get a true read on the strength of the DS; compare 2006 sales to 2007 sales, and you'll see an increase of a little over 35% for this current year - which is entirely in line with what I've been saying.
So, to bring this back to the case of the Wii. Unlike these other systems I've been discussing, the market trends for the three consoles (Wii/360/PS3) have very solidly shaken themselves out by this time. The DS required a year to "take off" in sales; the Wii has never had a slow period in sales, ever; it took off immediately and has never looked back. That's why it's been the fastest selling system of all time. Wii sales this year look more like DS sales in 2006 than in 2005. For this reason, I believe it's inappropriate to apply a scaling factor of something like 80% to Wii sales for next year. You can't use a "sudden takeoff" model for a product that's already taken off!
The very success of the Wii this past year mitigates against a crazy increase for next year. (If you sell 5m in a year, it's much easier to double sales than if you sell 15m!) It's no coincidence that I'm predicting Wii sales in 2008 to increase by about the same amout as DS sales did from 2006 to 2007 (~35%). The Wii is already past the explosive wunderkind phase and approaching the mature, market-leading console position, where sales will simply be consistently good at all times. Remember, I'm already saying the Wii will more than double its lifetime sales next year. Going too far beyond that is just going into John Lucas territory. 
Sales really don't change by all that much once the market trends for each platform have been determined. If you can think of an exception, it's probably a case from early in a system's lifespan, before the pecking order had fully been established.
