What's funny isn't even that they completely botched the PS3 and Wii numbers. It's that almost none of them correctly predicted the growth the industry has seen this generation. Most of the combined console sales are rediculously low to their current numbers. That just shows a lack of common sense and inability to do their job correct, because the industry has been growing steadily year in and year out.

 It was a joke. Another member here made the bold (read: outright foolish) prediction that GTA IV would be "The end of the Wii", a thread that lead to much hilarity.

They trusted too much in the past trends, the power of the brand, and the loyalty of the costumes and devs...

Nice to look back at the anti-Nintendo years, when we just had the anti-Nintendo period.

I'll add another one:

''Lately, there has been a considerable amount of discussion on which console will win this generation's war. Will it be the Wii with its established base and strong sales? Will it be the Xbox 360 with its steady growth? Or will it be the Playstation 3 with its strong sales over the past few months?

If you ask me, it'll be the Xbox 360.

Now I know what you're thinking -- "how?" The answer is actually quite simple: the Wii is not nearly as strong as some want to believe and Sony's strong growth is the result of a lower hardware price, which is allowing it to catch up to the pack.''

http://www.cnet.com/8301-13506_1-9939276-17.html

Note that his prediction was made yesterday. Unbelievable that people still think the Wii can lose this gen. This dick completely ignores the fact that the Wii is selling twice as fast as the 360, as fast as the 360 and the PS3 COMBINED.

And does anyone remember the prediction that actually said the Wii would have negative sales at the end of the generation, with the PS3 winning and the 360 like 10 million above the Wii?
That one was pretty goofy.

The bottomline is: those guys out there have made some stupid analyses back then, and they are still making them now.

Well, if you can't predict that the Wii will be super successful, drawing in non-gamers and bringing back casual gamers, how would you be able to see those people as a major reason that the market is growing?

A few breakdowns for fun.  (Actual sales in bold)

Piper Jaffray US through 2008.

2005
360 - 1.1 million (650k)

2006
360 - 6.0 million (4.4 million)
PS3 - 1.0 million (746k)
REV - 0.5 million (1.2 million)

2007
360 - 6.5 million (5.3 million)
PS3 - 6.0 million (2.7 million)
REV - 2.0 million (7.4 million)

2008
360 - 6.0 million (1.3 million to date)
PS3 - 8.5 million (1.3 million to date)
REV - 3.0 million (2.5 million to date)

Total Through 2008
360 - 19.6 million (48.3%) (11.7 million to date)
PS3 - 15.5 million (38.2%) (4.9 million to date)
REV - 5.5 million (13.5%) (11.1 million to date)

Citigroup US martket

UBS US Market

Total Through 2006
360 - 4 million (5.1 million)
PS3 - 1 million (746k)
REV - 1 million (1.2 million)

Total Through 2007
360 - 10 million (10.3 million)
PS3 - 7 million (3.5 million)
REV - 3 million (8.6 million)

Total Through 2008
360 - 15 million (11.7 million to date)
PS3 - 15 million (4.9 million to date)
REV - 7 million (11.1 million to date)

Total Through 2009
360 - 20 million
PS3 - 23 million
REV - 10 million

Pssh, we all know the huge Wii sales can't last. Sure the sales show no signs of stopping and sure it might even be increasing but it's so obvious that at some point in time, the sales rate will have a magical drop off. The slope of the drop will be so steep that it will be it becomes a mathematical impossibility and will be represent as a discontinuity across the graph line. We just have to keep on waiting for this point in time. It's coming. When? I don't know, but it's coming and all of these predictions will be ultimately be proven correct. That's my analysis.

 Wow.  I hadn't heard of this April Fool's joke.  That last line is fucking beautiful.  What a great "joke."  I guess I'm supposed to laugh because fun is the last thing I want out of my home media center/George Foreman Grill.

I think the funniest thing is that the analysts are looking at exactly the wrong things when trying to find the process which results in success. They focus inwards on the core of the industry to find answers, which is a huge mistake in any industry. The core demographic of a given industry, in fact, rarely exceeds 25% of the entire industry's patrons, and is never clearly representative of any group but themselves. If they did represent the whole of their industry, then those industries would be about fivefold larger at least, since everybody participating would be throwing their all into doing so.

The biggest problem is that looking at the core demographic seemed to make sense with video games for a long time. In fact, from the SNES onwards, it made perfect sense. They were willing to disregard the fact that the NES was outclassed by PCs of the time and was less popular with the core gaming demographic of the time, because a new core demographic formed under the NES' watchful eye.

Now it's happening again, in more or less the same fashion. And just like back in 1985, the existing gaming press does not understand that the only reason the core demographic "seemed" to reflect the success of systems was because the core demographic was defined specifically around the kinds of systems that we've seen put out before the disruptor appeared. And the sorts of games that got media attention were the core-demographic-appealing games, while titles which did not fall into that convenient niche were only vaguely mentioned at best, then brushed off and ignored.

In short, they're just continuing the same assumptions they have been for the last two decades or so. The problem being that those assumptions were based on a flawed model of reality.