no

I think PS4 and 720 will sell very well.

does anybody else but me think it's because people are saving their money for the next xbox or playstation systems, they wont be cheap and i would rather save my money for them, but i thought the Wiiu was actually selling well enough, i dont think anybody thought it would sell the like the Wii did, and the next real generations are what everybody is waiting on, not the Wiiu, thank you drive through....where the hell did Beavis and Butthead go

hell yea the games industry is in decline, and we'll likely not see a turn around till 2015. all we can do is hope PS4/720 can breathe some life back into the industry, as is the same hopes for big ip like Hal, UC, and Mario.

I've been worring about this for some time. I was asking myself if we don't see the history repeat itself in 3DS being bad, but Vita doing even worse and Wii U doing bad and PS4/Xbox8 doing worse.
I think that a lot of the problems come from the fact that $0.99 games have changed the market. People know how to count and in the current economy when you have to pay $60 for a game on a home console or $0.99 for a game on a tablet, they choose the second option. I am not at all interested in buying a $60 game, I can't even remember when was the last time I did. I always wait some time for a discount and even better for a GotY version, to snap the DLCs for free.
Games have to become cheaper. I think Sony is on something with Sly 4 at $40 and I am going to buy this game day 1 just to support the idea of $40 games.

The problems the Vita and Wii U have are the same. The things their predecessors did well are either now done better by competitors or are not important anymore. The 3DS took over the gaming niche the PSP occupied and the portable media player market moved on from the PSP towards smartphones and tablets. The Wii U doesn't really give us anything to entice current Xbox 360 and PS3 owners at the moment and it doesn't represent a no brainer upgrade for existing Wii users, you can say that it is either not good enough or that its competitors have got better.

Given enough time the Vita and Wii U will probably find their feet if their competitors sit on their hands. If the Wii U looks like it is struggling against 8 year old consoles then how will it perform against the latest from Microsoft and Sony? If the Vita is starting to have its lunch eaten by smart-phones and tablets, their rapid evolution will ensure that by the time the Vita starts to become relevant it'll be irrelevant if you get what I mean.

I don't see how a 400$ ps4 and xbox720 could possibly sell 300k units a week.

I believe this gen saw awsome numbers cause the casuals were on board, for all consoles. Almost every house have atleast 1console. Every teenagers and kids have their consoles. Look back at the day of Sega, N64, GC, Xbox, they all saw numbers around 30milion. It's the first gen where every console are selling over 70milion.

The casuals are leaving. This is not doom and gloom, It's just that the console industry is becoming ONCE AGAIN a niche market. I can't understand all the doom talk since consoles were ALWAYS a niche market till this gen.

With a new gen approaching, casuals does'nt feel the need to upgrade as of right now. I don't believe alot of kids and even teenagers will receive alot of 400consoles on year one. Parents will wait for their consoles to age and they will wait for a price drop to upgrade. Alot will wait for a certain market penetration, these ''obscure'' new consoles does'nt mean anything to them as of right now, but xbox360 does have a name that ppl know.

So I expect bad numbers for every consoles for atleast year1. With time, ppl will realise that they will seriously benefit from upgrading, but that will only apply to those who will stick with consoles wich I believe will be a big number. So on the long run, lifetime I expect 50mil for all of the big 3consoles, wich will confirm that consoles are a niche but healthy market.

-The wii-u is already at 2.5million units sold more than half the first full year of the Vitas sales after a month on the market.

-the 3ds is outperforming the DS when directly compared to its launch

-You need to go back to the week ending Nov17th to find a week where the 3ds sold under half a million, many of the xmas weeks were 3/4m to over the 1m mark PER WEEK and this is "selling decently"??

-It was the launch of Super Mario 3d land and Mario Kart 7 which lit the fire under the 3ds's sales after the price drop, the 2d mario game didn't come until months later.

I stopped reading by this point, there is too much wrong in the first paragraph to go on with what you build up from it.

I agree that development cost are increasing in an alarming speed. I even made a thread about it. But that's purely the 3rd party devs and publishers fault, not Sony, MS or Nintendo per se, they simple can't be satisfied with 1-2 million sales and have to go numbers way higher than that, which are very hard to achieve. And that's one of the things that might "killed" gaming, at least in terms of AAA tittles. 

As for the rest of your points I kinda agree with you, I mean Sony and Nintendo have both made some really stupid choices with the Vita and the Wii U respectively. So what have happen to this consoles won't necessarily reflect the 720 and the PS4, I think marketing is one of the most important aspects of this. 

I made some comments about how multimedia features will be a selling point of next gen consoles, but now that I think about it, those things won't help much (if at all), because most people will already have a tablet or a laptop that does those things, so there's no need to invest $350+

In the end all that matters in terms of consoles and handhelds are the games, it doesn't matter if you have the best graphics in the world or all the multimedia features, if you don't have the games, what's the point? People buy consoles and handhelds because of games, all the extra stuff are just secondary things, that applies to both 'core' and 'casual' gamers. 

People don't want a standalone gaming handheld in the West anymore. Mario and other Nintendo IP are keeping the 3DS afloat, Sony doesn't have that. Handheld market is going back to being primarily a kids market, older teenagers and adults are all about smartphones and tablets.

People also want a real upgrade from the PS3/360. These are 6-7 year old consoles, they don't want to pay $300+ just to get more of the same. This is Nintendo's big mistake in thinking that the "old tech + new controller" philosophy would work for them again. That strategy only works if your controller is an unbelievable home run idea.

Sony and MS should take note from the struggling Wii U -- if the PS4/720 are not large leaps over the PS3/360, they will be shunned, because why bother upgrading if your PS3/360 is similar? People are going to save their money and spend it on other attractive home electronics like a smartphone or tablet and just continue to game on their existing HD consoles or maybe even just lose interest in gaming period.