Good point Pie. Do you think that, if Nintendo still maintained the system and kept pushing it instead of preparing for the WiiU, that HW sales for the Wii would have stayed unchanged due to saturation (aka "everyone already bought it")?

I'm curious to know your thoughts

happydolphin said: Good point Pie. Do you think that, if Nintendo still maintained the system and kept pushing it instead of preparing for the WiiU, that HW sales for the Wii would have stayed unchanged due to saturation (aka "everyone already bought it")? I'm curious to know your thoughts

I don't think so. There is a limit in which sales can reach, I think the DS/PS2 is the highest (give or take) we will ever see a console sell. There are only a certain amount of gamers in this world, only a certain amount of Ninty/Sony/M$ fans in this world, only a certain amount of tech geeks. Then you have the Casual Market. Nintendo got ahold of them, it proved that you could squeeze out a little more sales but not enough to make it a long lasting seller. 

That is not true though. The amount of gamers are constantly increasing with stronger economics and new casual approaches (such as motion gaming).

The market is on a constant change, and all of the big three are playing catch up with it (while Apple already has caught up with an essential part of the casuals).

Good stuff.^ You make an interesting point.

If you don't mind, and anyone can answer this, if Nintendo hit a peak with the Wii, do you think they would need to look for more markets to reach if they were to continue supporting the Wii instead of preparing for gen 8?

This is hypothetical, and I'm not advocating for red ocean conquest or anything, this question is just out of curiosity.

In other words, had Nintendo opted to cater to the Wii instead of being "gen-8 ready", would it have been enough to just continue serving the casual and non-gamer market, or would it have been best to start reaching out to more dedicated markets (like the ones that play PS360 games)?

No. You are talking about the casuals. They won't always be there for Home Consoles, they will for Apple, though.

Who makes an interesting point?

I didn't necessarily say that they hit a hypothetical peak. It hadn't reached the caliper of their DS Sales nor the PS2's sales. It can improve. I just don't think 180M+ is in reach.

That would be a horrible decision.

Hmm... I sense a lack of sense in this post. It is a fact that the amount of dedicated and casual gamers are increasing every year. Preferences not just may but will change though, which makes the Playstation brand shrink while all others see a significant boost in popularity.

Well yeah, they pretty much are tied to one another. When hardware sales start to slow, it usually means the particular console is nearing the end of its lifecycle, therefore less people are interested in it, and as a result there is less software released for it.

There have been some anomalies though, most notably the PS2 here in the west, and handhelds like the GBA and PSP, where the PS2 still sold pretty well in the first part of this gen despite dwindling software sales and releases, and the GBA and PSP sold plenty of hardware units towards the end of their life despite very low software sales ratios.

Did I say "you", or did I say "you"... Anyways, you said that the reason why the trend is downwards is because Nintendo had reached all the people they could with the Wii. I was just following your train of thought I didn't say I agreed.

So much for that exercise.

"That would be a horrible decision"
I was stating a hypothetical and just asking for your opinion given that decision having been taken, not if the decision itself was a good one or a bad one.

Oh. I see what you are getting at now. Never mind. Forget what I said before.