Like most technological change, people expected it to take hold a lot faster than it actually has. You can see the same thing playing out with AI right now. Look back in a decade or two, and we're going to laugh at what people are saying about AI taking over right now.

That said, mobile has continued to gain market share, and consoles have lost market share. To be clear, I'm talking about the size of their piece of the pie. Console sales are not really declining. But they're not growing either, while other segments of the gaming business are growing. So consoles are a smaller segment of the market, and are continuing to decline relative to mobile (and sometimes to PC as well). So, consoles definitely are not dead. But I think it is safe to say that we are past peak console, and that their market share is likely to continue to decrease for the foreseeable future.

I don't think this take that console gaming was dying was so bad back then. Both Microsoft and Sony lost tons of money on xbox 360/Ps3 and wii u was a total flop. And probably around 20-30 millions of those xbox 360/Ps3 sales weren't real because of kinect and PS move, those people didn't buy the console for games but because of those silly toys.

Add in that Mobile gaming was exploding and their hardware performance was increasing fast. Analysts could see this potentially take away market share from console.

But we see now that Mobile gaming had no effect on the console market and Microsoft/Sony adjusted by selling their hardware for less of a loss. They are both now making record revenue from console but I'm unsure for microsoft as some their revenue comes from Minecraft so the quarterly earning report don't give us full picture.

The problem is there just isn't anything that can replace console. We have Pc to plug in to tv, but it's just too expensive and complicating to work for most people. Game streaming makes no sense for the average gamer to adapt as you will eventually able just buy a console for $300 and don't have to deal with the hassle from game streaming.

Micro consoles I think is the biggest threat to Sony/microsoft but I don't think amazon/google/apple will go all in here so nothing will happen.

I would say that one reason why se saw the X360+PS3 to X1+PS4 decrease is because there was a lot more reason to own both consoles in the X360 era than on X1/PS4 and now, it was a much better competitor to PS than any other console have been in the 5 gens mainly because of the exclusives that would have even people that are PS fans buying the console.

yeah maybe, I did own the xbox 360 :) played halo and gta5. Microsoft did have stronger games back then, unfortunely for them Call Of Duty dethroned both Halo and Gears of war.

Another reason could be Sony is looking to maximaze profit and not console hardware sales. As Sony probably could had release another ps4 slim and dropped price further.

I would say that one reason why se saw the X360+PS3 to X1+PS4 decrease is because there was a lot more reason to own both consoles in the X360 era than on X1/PS4 and now, it was a much better competitor to PS than any other console have been in the 5 gens mainly because of the exclusives that would have even people that are PS fans buying the console.

It is also worth pointing out that the Xbox 360 had one more year on the market than the PS4 & XBO did before replacement. That does help Gen 7 since it was such a back-loaded generation for PS & Xbox.

Also, the legs of the PS4 and XBO were cut out from under them. While there was a spike in demand for them in Spring 2020, stock inventories were depleted well before that year was out. Sony and MS were likely unable to make more of them because the same factors that generated increased demand for consoles also impacted supply chains. They were right at a generational transition and thus likely had to fully invest in production of the PS5 & XBS. MS effectively stopped production of the XBO at the end of 2020, though Sony kept producing small amounts of the PS4. As a result, while the PS3 & 360 sold over 2M in 2014 and another 921k in 2015, the PS4 & XBO sold only around 600k in 2021, almost all of that being the PS4.

By the end of 2019, the PS4 & XBO were still leading the PS3 & 360 in launch-aligned terms in the U.S. If their sales from 2020 to now were the same as combined PS3+360 sales for the 2013-2015 period, they would have sold close to 70M in the U.S., same as the final total for PS3+360, instead of the 64.4M they actually sold.

Worldwide sales, though, were about flat gen-over-gen, so the deficit in the U.S. (and a smaller deficit in Japan) was made up for by gen-over-gen increases elsewhere. That further implies that had nothing disrupted supply & demand dynamics (including production), combined global PS4 & XBO sales would have exceeded those of the PS3 & 360.