Only, it's not dropping off. At least not in a bad way. It's summer; nothing sells well during summer, especially first year consoles. Not sure how many different ways I can say it.

Also, Wii sales can absolutely have an asterisk next to them because the majority of people who bought one had never owned a console, weren't gamers and had no intention of buying another console (see: Wii U sales). Therefore it isn't representative of the actual market.

It's summer... heading towards the dead of summer... anyone spinning these numbers as doom and gloom must be forgetting last summer, or the summer before, or the 10 before those... Oh and 99k and 96k is HORRIBLE but if they would be 101k and 100k, you would then say "OMG Still over 100k even in summer!! dang!!" lol.. 

Logic...

And alot of people bought  PS2 for its DVD capabilities, yet both PS2 and Wii went on to sell huge amount of games. Anomalies occur, but trying to close our eyes and not pretend that we are seeing a massive decline, is to lie to ourselves. What the decline in sales from PS2 to PS3 and fro Wii to WiiU show is that gamers are a more mobile group than we often think, most switch between consoles or own multiple consoles.

But there's no decline (yet) from PS3 to PS4? In fact both PS4 and X1 are outselling their predecessors so far? What "massive decline" are you referring to? I mean honestly. You're looking for a way to show that consoles are declining from seventh gen, and failing.

no problem for me,sony will have its 3rd 100m selling console with the PS4,sales will be fine for the gen

PS1 100m PS2 100m Wii 100m PS4 100m      same each gen for the leader what is to worry about

A user said this in another forum... I copied it but I forget who said it.. either way, it just summed things up nicely. If someone knows who said this please point it out so they can have credit.

"Gamers in 2008: "X360? It's more like Xbox 1.5, graphics are the same, this console is horrible and overpriced! This gen sucks!"
Gamers in 2014: "X1? PS4? Graphics are almost the same as previous gen, that gen was amazing and gave a huge graphical jump. This gen is horrible and overpriced! This gen sucks!"

I will redo this post in 2019-2021 when another gen launches and PS4 and X1 becomes the "best gen evaaah".

I find the numbers kind of expected given that it's summer, no new releases, and literally anything media-related is the World Cup right now. I'm a little disappointed with Wii U sales, but we'll see next week.

We don't often see eye to eye. But on this occasion I couldn't agree more. If you want to assess how the generation is performing over all compared to last then you have to compare 1st with 1st, 2nd with 2nd etc. And hopefuly as students of the industry as a whole (not just mere fans of a particular brand looking to give free PR to our favoured consoles) we are interested in the health of the industry as a whole, not just who is outselling whom. So far the health of the console industry is not looking that flash. It's certainly not on a growth trajectory right now. I don't think unending gen on gen growth was ever sustainable, but as things stand this generation is looking like it's headed for a substantial drop. Last gen's total is in excess of 260 million for home consoles. This gen will be very lucky to break 200 million. -25% is too big of a contraction in a single generation. Though if we're seeing the beginning of the end of the traditional home console model (as I think we are) then it's probably a result that is to be expected. Ironically if there is one company that will stay with the traditional home console model, while the others move on to a post-console era, it would be Nintendo. If that turns out to be the case then how well Wii U does may not matter as long as Nintendo stays afloat as a company to be the last traditonal console maker standing. Their fate in this regard rests more on the fortunes of 3DS than Wii U.

But there are too many people with their heads in the sand, all starry eyed because PS4 had an amazing 2013, and Xb one even did will until the new year. These people think there's going to be continued expansion. However the reality is more likely to be a reshuffle of market share between PS and XB (interestingly PS3+360 < PS2+Xb), and hopefuly not more than a 70% (but possibly a truly disasterous 80%) decrease from Wii-->WiiU.

It is irrelevant that Wii was an anomaly. The fact of the matter is with that anomaly gone we are headed for a major decline in hardware sales for the generation, which in turn means a major decline in over all software sales, which in turn means major revenue decreases for everyone. While 3rd party software never sold brilliantly on Wii, the shear size of the Wii install base, and relatively low development costs, meant many 3rd parties released profitable games on that platform, including plenty of "non-casual" games that sold over a million.

I don't always acknowledge it, but I do think dire predictions for Wii U need to have a caveat. It is possible (though I think it unlikely) that the blue ocean market who bought into Wii might just be waiting in the wings and will snap up Wii U when it hits the right price point. I give about a 10% probability of that happening though.

It is legit to compare within brands though, if you want to guage the relative performance of the brand. But it is not a good basis for assessing the generation as a whole.

All the people who keep saying " Oh, all those doomsayers are ridiculous, were in the summer. It's normal". What you don't understand is that these numbers ARE horrible compared to PREVIOUS summers. Were not comparing summer sales with spring sales or holiday sales, these numbers are horrible when comparing them to previous summers.

Previous summer huh?! which one? 2013 or 2007?

Because i'm pretty sure that PS3 first summer wasn't better than this!