I'm not sure if that's really true as much as the young boys of the Nintendo/Sega era grew into being 18-25 year old males. :P

That certainly is a reasonable theory, I agree DK. Although new games DID have to be made for them: Mortal Kombat was a start, but there really weren't God of War style games in the SNES era or before. 

Whatever the cause was -- Sony's insight or the simple luck of video gamers getting older -- having the 5-15 year old age bracket as well as the 15-25 year old age bracket doubled their sales. 

I wouldn't say Nintendo is the only company who knows how to find "Blue Ocean" but they're the only company that is really looking for the "Blue Ocean". Guitar Hero, Katamari and DDR are games which appeal to people outside of the core gamer market that were not developed by Nintendo; the companies that developed these games tapped into a new market without looking for it by developing unique games.

The problem most companies face is that you're probably going to fail several times to create a new market before you actually create a new market. Nintnedo is the most successful with this because they always have multiple projects on the go which may or may not be successful. Doshin the Giant, Animal Crossing, Nintendogs, Electroplanktin, Brain Training, Odama, Wario Ware, and Pikmin are all unconventional Nintendo games that I can list off of the top of my head, if you look back at the history of Nintendo you'd find that in every generation they tried new concepts regardless of whether they  would be successful.

I expect that one of the main reasons Nintendo has been reluctant to move towards the "HD Generation" is that it is not easy to make a lot of unconventional games if your development cost on the game breaks $10 Million.

3rd generation:
NES sells 19M in Japan, 34M in NA, 9M in PAL, 62M overall

4th generation:
SNES and Genesis combined sell 21M in Japan, 41M in NA, 18M in PAL, 80M overall

5th generation:
PS1, N64, Saturn combined sell 33M in Japan, 63M in NA, 48M in PAL, 144M overall

6th generation:
PS2, GC, Xbox, DC combined sell 32M in Japan, 82M in NA, 60M in PAL, 174M overall

Big jump is obviously from 4th to 5th, with most of that being expansion in PAL regions. Remember a lot of the growth is due to more consoles available (multi-ownership) and population growth. Interesting to see how Japan's console market actually shrunk last-gen.

 The other big jumps -- even though the exact figures aren't as readily available -- are 0th to 1st (that's a no brainer) and 2nd to third. Specifically, it seems to jump a generation, and that's in line with this one, the seventh. 

I like to point out two things:

Why did Nintendo go the different route with the DS and Wii? The other reason is because they knew they couldn't compete in trying to make a more powerful machine again this generation and so they went the other approach. It's not just cause they were looking for new markets, it's because they didn't want to handle the huge costs of trying to compete with Sony and MS in power.

Second, if Sony went the Nintendo route it would be selling better, but I would probably be completely a 360 supporter lol

Sony and MS are going nowhere... if this ends up a Nintendo only business and I have to deal with 99.99999% of games being mini games I will quit gaming completely and that ain't happening.

Just cause Sony loses this generation it's not suddenly gonna quit this business jeez. 

I don't think Nintendo would have a problem producing inexpensive and powerful hardware (they've done it two generations in a row) but I think they thought they couldn't win by doing that. The Gamecube's power for the price was unmatched for the entire generation but they couldn't attract any attention from gamers or developers mainly because they were trying to compete in the exact same way as both Sony or Microsoft.

The DS was Nintendo's attempt to break the mold and was so successful that the Wii became what it is today ...

What, you expect every developer to go out of buisness or something?

I could see Sony screwing up the business badly just like they did with personal audio. Walkman was THE de facto brand when it came to personal audio prior to the iPod. Apple was a nobody in the business and Sony was god. But in the span of a couple years, Sony's missteps and Apple's brilliance completely flipped things around. Now Sony is a non-factor and Apple owns the business.

This should be a good lesson that no business is invulnerable.