So while going through Twitter, I ran into this little Easter Egg that showed the average analyst’s prediction of how the 7th generation of consoles would pan out between the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Revolution - Which would of course go on to become the Wii.

I really get a kick out of seeing these old predictions and how off the market they were. Especially the Nintendoom analysts. (Pachter)

The funny thing is, this is almost exactly how the PS4/Xbox One/Wii U race panned out. 

LOL

Another funny thing is that the combined userbase of the PS3 and 360 turned out to be almost exactly what was predicted here, it was just a much, much closer race than they thought, but more or less it was still 170m+ between the two.

But Nintendo just made them all look like total dipshits with how the Wii turned out. xD

The chart is a prediction for sell through to 2012, at that point the combined PS360 sales were under 150mln, and the prediction is for 180mln, not terrible but still an overestimate

They lowballed the total of all three by around 45-50mln (combined sales they have at 200mln, when it was more like 245mln)

Given the date of the prediction though it's understandable... this was made before we knew much about the Wii & the whole blue-ocean strategy, Wii flipped things as it took the casual & occasional gamers (which had previously been PS2 owners) as well as selling to new gamers, with hindsight this looks like a bad prediction, but in March 2006 I don't know if I would have made much of a different one.

Counterpoint though is I don't get paid to predict, these kind of firms do.

Somebody can see further ahead than they are aware. I wonder if they've realized it themselves?

Or maybe they do know and it was a troll in the form of the biggest console sales spoiler of all time?

Reminds me of when Gamespot ran an article that Wii would win the 7th Gen sales race as an April Fools joke in 2006:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/april-fools-analyst-revolution-will-take-lead-in-2010/1100-6146958/

That's how convinced the gaming media was that Nintendo would lose, that just the possibility of them winning was considered joke material

Nintendo gets overestimated and they fail. Underestimated and they win. Next gen they'll probably go and make another WiiU/Gamecube

Oops lol

Analysts just like to look at previous gen and feel like things will remain the same. That's why PS5's domination is not as guaranteed as some think.

I remembered that, still one of the beat April Fools joke ever !