Jaffray thought it would only be 5.5 million in the US for Wii by the end of 2008, boy was he wrong, but wow even into this year people were still expecting the PS3 and 360 to slaughter the Wii, its really very funny

wow...citigroup didnt have nintendo wii listed.

did they expect them to drop out and quit making consoles?

pffffffffffft

Has there ever been a case where a console did reverse its fortunes after the launch window closed? Companies have improved or worsened their lot when switching to a new generation, but within the lifespan of a single console, I don't know of any that were on top and collapsed, or were stuggling and then found an audience.

Has there ever been a case where a console did reverse its fortunes after the launch window closed? Companies have improved or worsened their lot when switching to a new generation, but within the lifespan of a single console, I don't know of any that were on top and collapsed, or were stuggling and then found an audience.

 There are times I want to interview these guys and ask them what they were thinking when they made the predicitions and if they've changed their minds since

I'm amazed at how bad some of these predictions are... I mean, there's no shame in being tremendously wrong for a prediction made in, say, 2005 before any of these consoles were on the market. It was unknown at that time what features each system would include, when they would be released, how much they would cost, etc. But really now, some of these so-called analysts seemed determined to stick to their predictions no matter how much evidence real-world sales data provided to the contrary. Some of the recent projections are just mind-boggling! Like this one:

Total Through 2012 (Strategy Analytics, Nov. 2006)
PS3 - 121.8 million
360 - 59.7 million
Wii - 23.3 million

Granted, this was still right as the consoles were launching, but come on! PS3 projected to outsell Wii almost six to one, with everyone knowing full well that it was carrying around that giant $600 price tag... Did they watch the crowd reactions at E3 2006 at all?!

Anyway, that's bad but the projections from Screen Digest were even worse:

Japan Through 2010 (Feb. 2007)
360 - 11%
PS3 - 64%
Wii - 25%

At the time that this prediction was made, the Wii had sold 1.56 million consoles in Japan, to the PS3's 682k (and 345k for the 360); that's a breakdown of 60.3% for the Wii, 26.4% for the PS3, and 13.3% for the 360. Almost perfectly correct - except that the Wii and PS3 numbers were backwards! Seriously though, how could you possibly make that prediction in light of the sales data on the market?! (It's not like the PS3 was supply constrained; the Wii was simply destroying it in sales.) That's an egregious mis-reading of the Japanese market. It truly is mind-boggling how off this group was.

I won't claim that I could have predicted this generation correctly either, but certainly by February of this year, I could have told you that the PS3 was not going to outsell the Wii by a factor of 2.5 to 1 in Japan!

if you see "anal" in "analysts", think twice before believing them :)

Precisely zero times.

However, we do seem some less extreme examples. Consoles that were doing pretty well ended up beating consoles that were, at first, doing very well; consoles doing poorly ended up beating consoles that were initially doing moderately well, and so forth.

But as for extremes? No. No console getting beat 2:1 (or more) out of the gate has ever come back. Not once, and none have even made it remotely close. However, I think we can all agree that this generation IS a tad different, with Nintendo going in a different direction. That different direction is one of their strengths, to be sure, but it also gives some leeway for discussion of possible lead changes. A switch would be historically unprecedented, but historically unprecedented doesn't mean impossible -- just unlikely. This industry is only 35 years old, after all.