For the industry and us that loves games, this change in the industry might not be bad. We have alot more games and experiences to choose from nowadays.

But the reaction from some people in here is just hilarious, it's not like Kowenicki is making up the charts. The traditional home console/handheld market is shrinking, and shrinking really fast. This will affect Nintendo the most if they don't evolve their strategy. It will affect MS the least since they have the larger and more diverse business model. Sony are somewhere in between, but they are really struggling as a whole right now and a shrinking market won't help.

Nintendo is looking as horrible as they were looking with the GC. The wii was a fad, it just took an entire generation for that to become obviously clear.

You say home consoles are historically lower and tings wil get worse, yet you say I am puting words in your mouth when saying you are suggesting that the industry is in overall bad shape. I don't know how you are arriving ar the solution that things are bad now and will get worse if everyone has just gone back to selling like they used to. But fine, lets give it a rest and see what happens next year when teher are more games to play on the PS4/XBO and that those consoles could potentially drop to as low as $300 in the fall season.

Yes, nintendo looks horrible, that we at least agree on anyone would have seen this coming though if they weren't looking outta ninty bedazzled glasses (not directed at you). 

Sigh.... and you are also doing what is causing that reaction by some. Its clearly understandable why the traditional handheld market is shrinking. And a lot have already said why in this thread too. But pls, share with us what indicated that the home console market is shrinking too? and how you can arrive at that conclusion when two of the players have not even got to the first post launch holiday season. What we simply have is one of the big 3 doing extremely poorly. One struggling and one doing much better than it ever has. Exactly what happened in the PS2 era. 

Its not ok to just pull in other stats or paramiters when trying to bolster your point that has noting to do with the discusiion at hand or worse still, to ignore the things that would make your point or perspective less valid. 

Damn!  What's up with that?

Awesome!  Thanks for the links, kowenicki.

I must say, MS don't make it easy to find their Xbox figures.  All their business is lumped in together.  At least, based on a brief scan of their reports from the early 2000s.

The Sony link, though, is very easy to follow.  Sales are listed by quarter, which... is a shame, but it's actually more than I was expecting, so no biggie.  The only thing is that the PS2 data only goes back to April 2006... and I don't see any PS1 data at all.  Damn!

Well, it's a start.  Thanks again for your help.  May I ask where your data comes from prior to 2006?

I am trying to avoid going into too much detail cause it will be too long of an explanation. You are all over the place right now. Now you are saying this is solely about the console business, but in your original post you made a combined analysis of hardware sales in total that included "handhelds". 

Also, you keep saying that console gaming is dying too, even if only by saying its going to be smaller, but in reltion to what/when, and you have not shown one statistic to bolster that claim of yours thus far. It also makes no sense saying that so early into a new console generation if you have a minimalistic understanding of how the console business model works. In two years, the PS4/XBO will NOT cost $400, they could even be as low as $200 due to the cost saving architectures that both sony and ms have used this gen. The quicker they can bring prices down, the faster they can sell. History proves this. Yet you somehow are ignoring that fact.

If you look at predictions, you will see that I actually agree that this gen won't be as big as the last. However, I believe that over 200+M consoles would be sold by the time its all said and done. If this is shared primarily between the PS4/XBO, then be rest assured that console gaming has never been healthier. Cause with console gaming its not just about hardware sales. Its about revenue streams, thats the basis of the console business. Revenue streams. And this gen, carrying over from the last; there are way more revenue streams than ever before eg. PS+/XBL subscriptions, microtransactions, DLC...etc. This gen, if sony or MS only manage to sell 80M hardware units each, while overall it wil be less than all combined hardware sold in the previous gen; they will still end up generating MORE revenue combined at the end of the gen. And as a business (not as a consumer) that is the most important measure of growth and success in this specific business model. And I don't even think this wil be the case cause these consoles will drop in prices faster than the last gen.

As for handhelds, I will just come out and say that the only company really in an all out bind right now is nintendo. Easily dicernable if you just take certain facts into consideration. in 2013 alone, sony sold over 20M XPERIA phones. Maybe even more, being that it sold over 10M in just one quater. Nintendo doesn't make phones. But I agree, handheld decline is bad for business as far as nintendo and sony are concerned, but I really don't see this as a bad thing (unless you are nintendo) handheld gaming had never been a prominent revenue stream for sony anyways.

Sorry for the wall of text, believe it or not this was me actually trying to be as concise as possible. If you want more details and reasoning that guide my opinions I could do that, but I with this hope you can better understand where I am coming from.

Well...., I don't see the problem here for Sony. It's obvious the only one who has a "problem" here is Nintendo, and can only be considered a problem if you comprare it to the fad that was Wii. Nintendo is just coming back to pre-Wii years for home consoles.

Sony will come back to 20-25m total shipped in a fiscal year, next year with PS3+PS4 sales. And after seeing the success that X360 was for Microsoft considering it never surpassed 15m shipments in a year thanks to its business model based on Xbox Live (amomg a profitable selling console), if Sony is capable to replicate the same model with a console that starts selling 20-25 mill every year (and I still think it can, starting FY2015), that will mean a lot more profits than PS1 or PS2 ever produced.

I always said that I expect 8th gen to sell lifetime around 210-220mill, so basically around 140m PS4, 50m XBO and 25m WiiU, to make a guess.... That's already a decline of 20% sales, a huge number. Wii inflated the numbers because of casuals and because it was the 2nd console of election to most people that choose only a ps3 or x360 too.

PS3+X360 will end around 170-180m total sales. From that number, if PS4 gets 75% of the sales, this means around 120-130m PS4 and 45-50m XBO sales. Those numbers (or at least vey similar numbers), for me are a safe bet because I don't see those consumers going anywhere...But then you have to consider the "casual" consumer too. If WiiU ends selling around 20-30m it means more than 60-70m were casuals that bought the Wii because it was "cool" then and now will buy another differente console like PS4??. I don't think so many people will buy a PS4 now, but I think there still will be millions that will buy a PS4 because is "cool" to have one.

So, in conclusion, YES, 8th Gen will be like 6th Gen, and YES, that will be fine for home consoles, in fact, it will be better because software profits will be even bigger thanks to digital sales and subscription models.

dleted, double post, my bad.

you are awsome ms pr bud, but no opinion  can be taken seriously if its payed bias propoganda.

All and their momma likly said ninty peaked, then the wii happend.  And implying xbox could grow through handhelds at this time is pure pr LOLz.

And PS4 is doing better then any PS console before it. 

Of course..... here you go.

PlayStation:

4 months (one territory) – March 31st, 1995 – 0.85 million
10 months – September 30th, 1995 – 1.77 million
16 months – March 31st, 1996 – 4.26 million
22 months – September 30th, 1996 – 8.07 million
28 months – March 31st, 1997 – 13.50 million

PS2:

1 month (one territory) – March 31st, 2000 – 1.41 million
7 months (one territory) – September 30th, 2000 – 3.52 million
13 months (all territories) – March 31st, 2001 – 10.61 million
19 months – September 30th, 2001 – 19.58 million
22 months – December 30th, 2001 – 24.99 million

PS3:

1 month – December 31st, 2006 – 1.7 million
4 months – March 31st, 2007 – 3.5 million
7 months – June 30th, 2007 – 4.2 million
10 months – September 30th, 2007 – 5.5 million
13 months – December 31st, 2007 – 10.4 million

PS4:

1 day – November 16th, 2013 – 1 million
2 weeks – December 1st, 2013 – 2.1 million
1 month – December 28th, 2013 – 4.2 million
3 months – February 8th, 2014 – 5.3 million

7 months - ~ 8 million sold.

You may want to say its worldwide as opposed to territory restricted, but sales are sales. In the PS4 is doing better than any previous sony console to date as it stands, looking at a sales in relation to time on the market. Unless of course you want to dispute that too. At this rate the PS4 is on track to selling around 15M consoles after its first 13 months on the market. Yet its doing poorly? As I keep asking, compared to what? Can you show me something that makes you feel that console gaming is doing poorly? And don't forget, the PS4 actually cost more than the PS2 did at launch.

Oh, I see.  Damn.  I don't suppose you remember what they were?  Heh!  Worth a try, right?

Actually, in digging around, I did come across this...

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/PlayStation

Not much on the page itself but the chart does show yearly shipments...

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/File:Sony_consoles_shipments.jpg

I have no idea how reliable this information is but... there it is.

Wow, the year of the great market crash, no less!

Thanks for the link.  Those tables are awesome!  That's exactly the kind of data I need for Sony and MS!