It's funny, on a monthly basis compared to 2006-2011 the figures are terrible...in relative terms I don't think GC or Xbox ever had a long run over what Wii and X360 are currently doing. N64 did around 150k a month in its best months in the US, PS1 was more like 250k a month in its best months.
The industry is growing a lot but the historic pattern is that once you hit a certain level...yeah everything just dies really fast.
Will be interesting to see if Wii and PS3 stay above 100k per month in 2012 - I think both will (unless they were split at 160k / 120k this month). February is typically up on January a bit, I know Just Dance 3 and Dance Central 2 are sold out locally presumably on valentines day gift demand, March is five weeks - don't see Wii or PS3 dropping to 20k per week in 2012. Expecting a Wii price cut once 3DS hardware is profitable again to differentiate Wii as a legacy platform from Wii U.
I guess that's the other thing - next generation console launches typically lower holiday growth for older systems. I actually don't expect Wii / X360 / PS3 to be down 30-50% for most of the year, probably more like 15-35% in most months, but Wii will be down a lot in November and some in December, and the same goes for X360 and PS3 - and the only reason Dec won't be down massively is because it was a shit month in 2011.
It will also depend on how Wii U launches, if its hot and priced right with a strong stream of big games it could sell very well, better than Wii did initially (Wii did about 1m in 2006).
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
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