Unless there's over 1/4 billion games lying around in warehouses etc, I think it's fair to say it has happened already.

Considering the Playstation 2 hit the 1b s/w mark....It's probable the X360 or PS3 could hit 1b. The Wii has the best chance *if* it's tier ratios started improving (but they're not).

Its very unlikely the DS would hit the 1b mark. The DS has had a lock on a 5.0 tier ratio, and has stayed there. The DS would have to hit 200m units sold to attain 1b s/w sold.

Either way, we're either going to have to see a system have a global tier ratio of 14.0+ for the PS3/360, or the Wii is really going to have to do something like either sell 100m+ systems, or have a 360-like tier ratio.

Right now, the 360 is way out ahead of the pack, for console software. In the US, it's sold around 40m units. Add on another 25m from Europe and Japan, and it's at 65m. The Wii is *around* 30~35m, and the PS3 should be around 10m by now.

But what if we discover another planet with intelligent aliens? Some planets are big enough for 120 000 000 000 people. if only 20% of the citizens would have enough money to buy games, and if only 50% of that 20% would actually buy them, you get a audience of 12 000 000 000 people, twice as many as the entire population of earth, where the total gaming audience is around 200 000 000 people, only 3.3% of the entire population. In theory this would mean 60 times as many sales (I'm not counting piracy levels and alien consoles), enough for super mario bros, which sold 40 million times on earth, to sell 2.4 billion times total.


:P

Don't forget downloads. One billion is quite possible, considering the mushrooming casual/download market.

 That's a very good point, the topic startr didn't state whether they count. Although, like previous people have said, this thread is a bit redundant as the PS2 has already achieved it.

I guess the real question might be if something can beat the PS2, which will ship hundreds of millions of more games.

Wii is the console which is really going to have a good shot, I think. It will probably have lower tie ratios due to its wider audience, however it is also the only console with any shot of beating PS2's hardware sales. If Nintendo continued the Wii Sports and Wii Play pack-ins for the long term (I expect they will, just as they did with Tetris, SMB, etc.), they could potentially move 75 million+ between those two titles alone. If we include downloadable games, I imagine the Virtual Console will have ballooning sales to 100 and 150 million in the Wii's lifetime. (Though that isn't quite fair, since the VC will continue past Wii... But then again, its something which could pull down the tie ratio.) So between the pack-ins and downloads, you can spot Wii over 200 million potentially, which goes a long way towards the 1.5 billion it may need to beat PS2. If downloads don't count, I'm guessing PS2 will retain the crown, but we'd be overlooking the evolution of the business model with downloads if we say that much and stop.

Certainly a long-term proposition. Wii had shipped 28.84 million pieces of software through March, according to N's financial report. I assume that counts the Wii Sports pack-in, but not VC downloads. The quarterly report isn't too long away.