When you're losing ground by the day, it can hurt.

wrong:im going with a ps3 as my second console

The industry grows every year anyway.

The thing that helped most this time around was probably the high prices of consoles more than anything else. (The charts in your link are for revenue only)

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Nintendo themselves did some research into their current userbase about 1 year ago, and found that about 90% of Wii owners had owned a console from the 6th gen. (so add in those who skipped 6th gen but had a previous console and it's probably at least 95% of Wii owners having a console before.

Of course that has probably changed now (probably between 80% and 90%) but still a lot of Wii owners were gamers before.

Actually, prices of consoles have always been around the same amount.

"For its North American release, the NES was released in two different configurations, or "bundles". The console deck itself was identical, but each bundle was packaged with different game paks and accessories. The first of these sets, the Control Deck, retailed from US$199.99, and included the console itself, two game controllers, and a Super Mario Bros. game cartridge. The second bundle, the Deluxe Set, retailed for US$249.99, and consisted of the console, a R.O.B. accessory, an NES Zapper (electronic gun), and two additional game paks: Duck Hunt and Gyromite." - Wikipedia

And that was in 1985 $ so they are probably equivalent due to inflation and possibly more expensive in the old days.

Here is a nice little site for calculating inflation:

http://cost.jsc.nasa.gov/inflateGDP.html

It was done by NASA so I assume it is accurate.

$200 in 1985 is $320 in 2007.

I would assume the price of games is relatively constant as well.

@Timmah

Don't read what he's saying like a consumer - if you read it like a designer or producer you can see the points and the context.

By saying graduate he's basically saying that Microsoft would be favorable toward AAA games that are a step up from Wii games in what they are about, but still appeal to the Wii crowd, he's saying that Xbox360 is currently the best platform for this transition for developers.

His explanation was that the games on the Wii let's say Wiisports is made for a 9 year old. If you take into mind that 'casual gaming' is considered a dumbed down gaming and as someone said above "Win button" then what he's talking about is a Microsoft attempt at bridge games.

It only makes sense that he would use the word Graduate as that must be the jargon on the inside for those guys - bridge games or graduate it's all the same in the end.

Oh, and so when he said 9 year old's he's just using the old Microsoft meme of calling nintendo kiddy - which isn't working well as most of the gamers that buy Wii's don't care about the industry - they care about the fun they want from it.

Only people making money from the industry, otaku's and geeks care about what these guys say - but the stigma in the industry is still that Wii is kiddy another is that only Nintendo games sell on their console and so on and so forth.

I think I covered moe than enough now

1. NINTENDO consoles have always been about the same amount yes (I think they were all launched at $199 until the Wii)

2. You cannot factor in inflation into this because the graphs in your link do not, they sho a revenue increase, they don't tell us how much that revenue is worth comparatively.

3. Lets compare the prices of last gen consoles to this gen.
Xbox and PS2 both launched at $299.... GameCube at $199 (Dreamcast was this as well)
Nintendo's console is $50 more than last gen
Sony's was $200-300 more (now $100-200)
Microsoft's was $0 - 100 more (better selling version was $100 more) then $180 more (elite) and they haven't gone down much yet.

I dropped out of school because of what Microsoft said. My friends all graduated from school and they still play the Wii. Now I'm a bum on the street, and it's all because Microsoft's false information!

I'm suing!

^^They do show the amount of increase in revenue in the article. I believe it went from $12 Bil to $18 Bil. Inflation is nowhere near that much. Including inflation in these numbers show that the video game market prices remain relatively constant and yet the total amount of revenue grows, thus someone else in the world is getting into the video game market. As long as revenue increases at a larger rate than inflation, the market is increasing. AND when hardware increases its revenue the most and software drops(even with a $10 increase in price), there are more units being sold than usual. This market increase has to come from somewhere. You cannot sit there and tell me an increase of around 6 billion dollars does not mean an increase in market size.

And you just further my point.  Even with an increase in the cost of software, the percentage of software sales dropped from 2006-2007.  This was made up for in hardware sales.