Consoles survived with the sales levels of the NES and SMS. To go back to the size of that time would mean an incredible big contraction. I think a possible contraction of the industry will not be that big, so I think dedicated console-makers can survive. It will be rough time though.

What is funny about this is that if you posted a thread on "WiiU will dive bomb and be the new Dreamcast", yet post sources from Forbes and stock tickers, you get banned.
But you can post just as equally provocative , yet utterly unjustified and biased thread on how it will sell for no reason besides "I luv ma Nintendo" and here we are, on page 4...

But no, OP is full of nonsense, hence no sources and tons of random opinion.

Yes, I agree (I agree too often with you, you should start to post more unreasonable stuff). The thing is, WiiU-weekly sales are worse than the weekly sales of Vita in the first year. That's really troubling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire

Oh, I know.  I just felt like making a comment on it.  

i have a feeling that for a long time into the life of the PS4 and Nextbox their biggest competitors will actually be the PS3 and X360, i believe the major multiplats will go on those as long as it is financially viable(which could be a long time with a combined install base of over 140 million consoles),

dunno, budgets are a lot bigger today (wiiU, ps4, nextbox) than in the GC/xbox days let alone NES days.  with all the bankruptcy we've seen this last gen i feel like even a small contraction (10-15%) could be the breaking point for many.  

oh and, ps4 is guaranteed to sale 350 million units.  ..year one.  yep, you heard it hear first.  :P

There´s such a depressing vibe surrounding the 8th generation.

The first three systems (3DS, Vita and Wii U) haven´t been performing well (Vita and Wii U are terrible, people say 'SUCCESS' about the 3DS, but honestly, only Japan is really doing something for the system, Western sales are poor), and now rumors/stories about no used games, games costing $69, microtransactions in all of EA games (you can bet other big publishers will do the same)...depressing :(

The budgets can shrink again. Yes, that will be hard for the big companies, as the gamers expect always bigger, more polished, better looking games. But we don't expect that from Indies, so they have smaller budgets. If in a crash some of the big publishers burn away, some indies will grow into their place. Also some of the big will survive. EA has already found a way to sell yearly only slightly updated games. So I expect at this point, that EA can survive a video-game crash. So I probably see some publishers/devs go out of the market, but others will survive and new companies might try to get into the freed places.

And thanks for the unreasonable statement. I say it here: Your prediction about PS4-sales of 350 million in the first year are completely unrealistic. With MS making the right decisions every sane person gives the PS4 300M max for year one.

the wii brand has been slumping in sales for 3 years now,console only ppl are fed up over the aging/dated tech in these systems(wii/u).. and the wiiu doesnt have a hook to it this generation like the waggle wand of the original wii had, that just sucked in the casuals hook-line-and sinker. ppl just dont care about this massive tablet-like controller that displays the image in non hd. they just cant recapture the magic the original waggle wand had. this is the vita of consoles