I agree that pretty much defines a good chunk of the casual crowd.

But that also kind of proves my point.  Most of the next gen systems are not night and day visual upgrades.  Sure, you have 64 players versus 24-32 in mulitplayer.  But they will continue to release both COD and BF4 for the PS360 for anohter couple of years.  No need to go out and buy another console for that.  What will th landscape look like then for other options?  Will the casual crowd finally bore themselves a little with that kind of gaming??

There are no absolutes.  Of course a number of casuals will buy the next gen.  If they didn't, they would only sell 30 million consoles.  I just believe there are a large number of other things for people to game on that weren't available last gen. 

I actually think that XBox could find themselves in a similar place as Nintendo after the holidays. It'll be interesting to see how well they maintain a 500 price point when January rolls around especially with a cheaper box on the market that is superior. I kind of agree with OP in that this gen sales will not surpass last gen. How drastic? that I'm not sure of.

Like a user above us said, we need to define casual gamer first.  but to be clear my post was directed to this message:

"the PS4 doesn't do much for the casual crowd".
If the people here are putting those user who only play FIFA, COD, Madden as cusual gamer, than yes, Sony success depends on them.  Thinking about this, what makes him think those people won't come back for another round of those games next gen?

I think that their ciurrent cosole that will still get versions of those games each year for the next 2-3 years will just play them on the PS360.  WHy upgrade?

I do believe that you have some good points. 

I wouldn´t say that this generation will fail financially, it will sell enough to, at least, give some profits to each company. But I do believe that no brand this generation will sell as good as the previous one.

Console gaming, unfortunately, due to several reasons, and despite all the money it moves, is failing in becoming a major entertainment branch attractive to all people, like music, books or cinema. I´m not saying that people won´t be playing games in the future, but many will definetely use different approaches to play them, like you said, tablet, smartphone or PC social gaming. Some people even don´t care about consoles anymore. The biggest challenge of the console industry now is how to bring new consumers to the market, and not only bring the so-called "casuals" back.

And we still have the problem of high production costs and the AAA paradigm, that has been slashing  the financial situation of many developers, Square Enix the biggest example, the market won´t be big enough to sustain such productions and we probably will see less new games.

The industry will have to shift some of its aims and paradigms, but financially this generation may end just fine. The generation after this is what we really should be worried about.

I applaud you OP for dooming all three consoles. So kudos for that. It is really hard to say what final numbers they'll all end up with. We can all kind of make an educated guess that Wii U is not going to end up doing all that well. In fact around 25-35 million would be a pretty great victory considering its sales trends at the moment.

The sales for other two should slow down a bit after the holiday rush. With big game launches pushing hardware from time to time. The analyst are predicting about 100 million each for PSXBO and that might not seem too far fetched for most. The thing is though, the world economy is still in recession. My country (Canada) is on a brink of deflation and many parts of the world have already been there. The US is recovering but not fast enough as there are still millions and millions of people on food stamps. Video game being a luxury item surely falls lower on the list ofpriorities i assume. 

The macro economic trends of market contraction cannot be ignored when trying to speculate the long term sales projections. Most of us here make our projections based on hype and one thing we all know is that hype =/ sales.

I do however wish all consoles end up doing well. At least to the point that they are a sustainable ventures for their respective corporations to not pull the plug on them, when the time for next generation arrives.

Well, we don't know how much time current console would keep receiving those version, but i believe the upgrade would be progressive.  As time passes, if one of you friend decide to upgrade, eventually people would make the jump.  i already know a lot of people that bought a ps4/One just to play COD, the same game as current gen with better resoulution and textures just because one friend decided to move on.

I also had a hard time not laughing at the idea that I was "dooming" all three consoles. 

I also agree that they will all be profitable to some extent.  I would expect the XB1 to be the most profitable for Microsoft because of the cross platform realtionship to Win8 and Winphone and Win tablets.  Xbox Music/video/apps will be a big bread winner over time.  That is one aspect that I didn't talk alot about before.  Microsoft will sell a good number of XB1's due to people wanting one ecosystem for all of their media consumption.

ppl moved on to the ps3 when the ps2 was still also selling maddens,cods,fifas after the ps3 came out.slowly but they came.. now the ps4 is already starting out at 400$ and doesn't have to wait over a year to hit that mark when the ps3 finally took off at that price and never looked back,and what was that big casual game that got the ps3 to 80M(eventually wll be over a 100M)??? I don't recall the big casual game for the ps3 that moved tons of ps3's. I think you under-estimate just how large the hardcore crowd actually is...also there are casuals that like good graphics and they will move on quicker than you think/give credit for to buy a better looking madden/fifa/cod(especially on year 2,when the sports game finally get a real next gen look)