At the end of this generation? No.

The thing about 50 percent market share, is it's not an end goal, it's a fleeting moment that you can achieve much easier early on, than you can as the numbers start to add up. You have to sell much larger quantities to beat the competition combined.

So, if the Wii is gonna obtain 50 percent market share, I believe several things will have to work out.

A. GTA will have to be delayed.

B. Nintendo will have to up production very quickly.

If I had to guess, I would say that if Nintendo doesn't reach 50 percent market share before december of this year, it's never going too, because the multipliers will be too high at that point.

hmm.. I expect the HD consoles to do much better after GTA 4 releases , so I think 50% marketshare isn't achiveable for the Wii

I'm still not convinced that GTA4 will cause any lasting boost in HD console sales, especially when the Wii has titles to help counter it(SSBB, Mario Kart and Wii Fit will all likely come out within the same timeframe). Really depends on if the market is still GTA crazy like it was in the past. I don't expect it to sell as well as GTA:SA, but it should do better than the two 'stories' games that came out after.

Now if Microsoft/Sony pull out a price drop around the time of GTA4's launch, it may be a different story.

The real question is if Nintendo taking 50% of the market would be good for the industry. I'd personally say no. We're not recovering from a gaming market crash so some healthy competition is good for everybody(especially us gamers).

Guys, stop thinking in terms of what appeals to core gamers. Wii appeals to a much wider audience. A much larger audience. GTA will not matter in the long run.

Wii is still selling out and in a 'steal from Peter to feed Paul' situation between NA/Japan/Others. And they havn't even launched in some markets yet.

Wii production will continue to increase. Wii Fit will bring in an even wider audience than Wii Sports. 50% is easily achievable before the end of '08. By the end of this generation it'll have PS2 type dominance, despite PS3/360 outselling xbox/GC.

Let's stop thinking in terms of ideology, and start thinking in terms of sales. Outside of the holiday period (Nov/Dec) and the week of a few key releases (Halo, Everybody Golfs/Gundum Musou in Japan), the Wii has consistently outsold 360 + PS3 combined. In 2007, the Wii outsold the other two systems combined in 34 out of the 52 weeks according to VGChartz data. You can also see from the 2007 hardware table that it outsold 360 + PS3:

VGChartz Hardware data for the period 07th Jan 2007 to 30th Dec 2007:

Console	Wii	PS3	X360
Total	16,393,101	7,659,577	8,156,665

So far in 2008, the Wii has outsold the other two combined in 4 out of 5 weeks (including this week); the one it missed was a week of extreme supply shortage in the American market. Even in that weeks (Jan. 12), the Wii still captured over 40% of the overall hardware sales:

Wii: 210k (41%)
PS3: 161k (31%)
360: 140k (27%)

Let me repeat that: in the Wii's absolute WORST perfoming week of 2008, an anamoly caused by supply shortages, it still had over 40% of the market. Barring some kind of seismic change in the market, it's inevitable that the Wii will eventually reach 50% market share. I'm not sure why anyone is doubting that. The only reason it hasn't already happened is the one-year lead of the 360, which continues to be whittled away week by week.

Really, the question is whether it will happen in 2008 or not until 2009. I still say it's a 50/50 chance to happen this year, and could go either way.

I think the Wii will achieve 50% market share by the end of July but lose it as the holidays approach when all consoles have mad sales. Then I think the Wii will achieve 50% again in early 2009.

Even having 45% of the consoles on the market is an incredible difference. As time passes, with more and more consoles sold to consumers, the %-market share figures will flatline more and more and be harder to move - it's just the way math works. Once you sell 50 million consoles, and you own 50% of the market, you have to sell millions to even beat your own market share, and that's the key.

Look at DS, even though they are selling a near 3:1 ratio right now, DS: PSP, in order to bump up to 70% share, DS would have to sell 7:3 ratio, which is both harder, and being only a SMALL change, would take a year or more to even get to 70% market share.


HOWEVER, Nintendo has a lot of BIG games coming up, games that will inevitably move consoles. With all the 3rd party support now, even if the games are crappy, the games will sell at least enough to encourage more 3rd party support. Think about all the mediocre games for PC - the reason they make the games is that EVERYONE has a PC, so the chances of selling your mediocre, or even crappy game, is pretty good. It's a slight snowball effect.

I think is possible 50 % of market in this year, in the end of the year.

MANUELF said: I think is possible 50 % of market in this year, in the end of the year.

It is very unlikely that the Wii will have 50% market share at the end of the year. That is when sales of the PS3 and 360 are very close to the Wii. It is during the off season that the Wii holds very strong sales compared the other consoles. Nintendo will move 1.5-2 million + consoles during what is considered the slow months for Sony and Microsoft. That is why I see then achieving 50% by summer. The Wii actually loses ground in the months of Oct-Dec.

Hahaha, wow people on this board are amazingly blind, do you really think that GTA 4 will do anything more than a temporary bump in sales, its a game that is split across two consoles purchased by the same gamers who own a 360 and PS3 right now.

Wii not crossing 50% is utterly moronic even now, even with severely restrained supply, Wii is selling more than 50% of the market, you really think that will suddenly stop because of one game?

PS3 and 360 won't even reach 45 Million combined by the end of 2008, Wii will have over 50% of the market