It's not what I would call entirely likely, but still a realistic "best case" scenario.

To get a better idea of how high the numbers could really go... There are 1.2 billion TV households around the world.

Let's just focus on Cable TV numbers to help limit the numbers, but you certainly don't need cable TV for a game console. 355 million of those have cable TV.

The US only has 69 million cable households. China has 106 million. China is relatively untapped for video game consoles. A lot could happen in 6 years where areas of the world that didn't have video game consoles suddenly open up.

This also doesn't take into account people who may get multiple consoles. By the time the wii reaches $99, there will be many households that may have more than one console because everyone in the family will want to play different games at the same time.

What's with people predicting 200 million sales for Wii?

That's not happening.

The PS3 and Xbox 360 have a solid chance of getting over 50 million sold, but even if everything goes perfectly for them I think they'll still end up closer to that than a hundred.

The Wii on the other hand is a real wild card. Breaking 100 million is very likely, and it might even do it twice if they manage to expand the gaming audience enough, and have a longer lifespan than usual due to graphics ceasing to matter as much etc.

Predicting something as likely and saying "it's possible" are different things :p

Really, all of us giving high numbers are echoing the same chorus: we don't know how expanded this expanded market is. Before the playstation, games sold largely to 5-15 year olds; after, they sold to 15-25 year olds as well, which almost precisely follows the system sales increasing to twice their previous size.

Now, games are selling to 35 year olds, 45 year olds, 55 year olds... I've even seen a lot of elderly people come in and buy the console. It's difficult to tell precisely what percentage of such people are actually purchasing the thing from anecdotal evidence, but that sort of thing really is happening.

So what happens if the audience for video games doubles again? The Wii is clearly the benefactor of most of that expansion.

Wii: 150m
360: 40m
PS3: 30m

Realistically I would say

100 to 120 Million for the Wii
40 to 60 Million for the PS3
30 to 50 Million for the XBox 360

The Wii has the potential to sell 20 Million or more systems in a given year and can probably maintain that pace for a maximum of about 4 or 5 years before I would expect sales to slow down; I would expect Nintendo to release their follow up system in 2011 and price it between $200 and $300 which will enable rapid adoption (and kill off the Wii quickly).

The XBox 360 and PS3 are both selling less than 10 Million systems per year; it would take either system quite a while (say 2 years) to build up enough momentium to sell between 10 and 20 Million units in a given year. As these systems start getting to a level where they can really take off a brand new system from their competition will be released which is at a very similar price and far more powerful.

They're best-case scenarios. Look at what's happening with DS... imagine the DS started selling insanely right off the bat, instead of 18 months after lauch. Two and a half years later, they're at 45 million consoles, producing over 2 million/month, and are *still* supply-constrained.

If the market grows from its current (approximate) 170 million console base to, say, 250 million or greater, and it's possible for the other two consoles to be held to 30 million each, the best case scenario says Wii just got 190 million. Wii's userbase is determined in large part by how much the market grows.

Best Case:

Wii: 110 Mil
PS3: 75 Mil
360: 65 Mil

110m ps3

45m 360

90m Wii

sorry, posted on wrong thread.