Enterbrain President Hirokazu Hamamura offered some sales forecasting at the CEDEC 2006. According to GameFront.de, Hamamura foresees the Wii selling 10 million units in Japan over the next five years, compared to 4 million for the GameCube in the same timespan. The PS3 is pegged at selling 9 to 10 million in five years -- roughly half the rate of sales the PS2 enjoyed. In addition, Hamamura noted that though the first 500,000 units would sell relatively quickly, sales growth would be sluggish from there on out -- Blu-Ray would offer the console no advantage as significant as the PS2's DVD capabilities were back in the day. Unsurprisingly, the 360 was written off completely, with Hamamura pointing out that the console also faced an uphill struggle in Germany. Your thoughts?

This analyst has almost said eveything! PS3 will have the similar career of the N64: Too expensive, and not enough good games in time

Well, the last few generations of Nintendo's consoles have done significantly better in the US than in Japan, which may have influenced Hamamura's projections. The DS is the first to genuinely buck the trend, but it also lends itself to a wider potential audience than the Wii -- half the reason, I suspect, that killer app Brain Training was so popular is the fact that you could take it on the go and integrate it into your schedule. A home console will have a little bit harder time picking up sales among the market segments the DS converted.

A 50% drop in the Playstation fanbase over the next generation in Japan? Thats almost unheard of, the only system to have ever saw such a huge drop was SNES -> N64 (fell around 66%), and that was mainly due to the introduction of new competition and the loss of practically every popular 3rd party franchise. Sony already has FF and well, nearly every other 3rd party franchise that sold decently in the bag or PS3, but the big question mark at this point is Dragon Quest. I cant really comment on the Wii, i don't believe it will take off in the same manner the DS has, but i do believe it will do better than Gamecube. A 250% increase? That may be a bit exaggerated.

A lot of that is down to the fact that the price of the high-end PS3 is more than double that of the PS2. Even the original PS2 didn't start seriously taking off in sales until the price cuts started, so it's not that far-fetched a prediction.

The PS2 had a year and a half head start last time and only had the N64 to contend with, about 6m sold before the Gamecube was released and only sold when DQ and FF titles came out. This time around if lauched about the same time with Wii having Zelda and a Dragons Quest game at launch things will be very different to PS2 Vs GC I predict in Japan: Wii 16m PS3 8m

Luthor said: This analyst has almost said eveything! PS3 will have the similar career of the N64: Too expensive, and not enough good games in time

 I think that will happen as well.

Haha. Funny to see an old thread like this. Would anyone really be surprised by Wii selling 25 mil to PS3s 8 mil at this point?

 ^^^ fag.

I LOL'ed.