With rapidly expanding user bases in existing markets, growth in developing countries as well as new markets like India and China, do you think that we may see more than 1,000,000,000 units of software sold for one platform this generation? (Total software, not one title)

At least India is probably going to play a much larger role than last gen, but a billion units? That's way, WAY over even my most optimistic estimates for the Wii. =P

I think so.......i think it will be for the DS

Doubt it. Think about it, that's a 1/5th of the entire population of the world.

DS software sales are around 70M in Japan only. Japan DS hardware sales account for about 40% of world-wide DS hardware sales. Assuming Japan accounts for 40% of world-wide software DS sales, the DS is at 176M software sales world-wide so far. DS software sales were 460K in Japan and 340K in North America this week. NA and Japan account for just under 70% of world-wide hardware sales so assuming they account for 70% of software sales, the DS sold 1.17M software this week. At this rate, the DS would need another 14 years to sell one billion units of software. Factoring in holidays, it might take only 12 years. As you can see, I made a ton of assumptions, so this won't be very accurate at all. Anyway, I definitely don't think the DS will last that long, so no, no system will sell one billion units of software this generation.


If we're only talking about consoles only, then definitely, definitely not. The Wii's lifespan is limited by it's lack of power and the other consoles... suck.

Holy ****, it's already happened!

 As of March 31, 2007, the PS2 has sold 1,240 million units of software according to this site. I wonder why ioi's figures are so far off (PS2 Japan software sales are half what Sony says they are)? I guess software sales are just super hard to keep track of.

 hit the breaks there speedy.

 those two are atleast a decade away from being a decent sized player in the console/software sales.

 according to Sony they shipped 1.24 billion software titles as of March 31, 2007.

link: http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdatasoft_e.html

I am talking software.  That's total software.  Not the number of consoles or one title, it is all software sold.  I think it is reasonable for this gen.  As for Sony's shipments, they have an incredible track record with PS2, and they do themselves a diservice by only releasing shipped #'s.  They probably include jampacks and such in those numbers, however 700 or so that they did sell is no joke.

Even *I* won't be as bold as to make THAT prediction.

In 25 or 40 years once gaming's outreach expands, maybe.

John Lucas