I believe every gen gets bigger and bigger in terms of sales, not only that but the Wii has opened gaming to new areas of people. The market doesn't run "dry" at anywhere around 200 M

4th: 96 M Consoles

5th: 155 M Consoles

6th: 195 M Consoles

around a 60 M leap from 4th to 5th Gen

50 million seems about right,

360 fans, you need to realize that you are coming out of your 3rd year, which is typically the peak year, sales might stay fairly flat this year, but it is only down hill from here.

Microsoft is building its install bases painstakely and its royalty+subscription business model requires it to keep this install base for the long run.

Microsoft will make sure that nobody presses the "reset" button for next gen installed-base and that the 360 customers will remain with it pretty much forever. This means it will make sure that whatever comes after the 360 will be just a better 360. A model that will share the 360 base-architecture and will maintain "forward compatibility" allowing existing 360 owners to stay with their current consoles and enjoy all the new games .

A Slim model, an "on-line" model with no disks/DVDs, features like 3DTV capabilities, IPTV, DVR and new innovative controllers can all be added to the base 360 architecture without rendering the installed base obsolite. In fact, Microsoft will allow existing 360s to be upgraded to these new features. All the new games will run on all models of the 360.

This "forward compatibility" means that the 360 and its improved variants will be with us for the next 7+ years. Yes, the 360 sold 7 Years from now will look very differently than the one sold today. Just like Windows 95 was very different than Windows Vista. But, it will be a 360 non-the-less.

And this means that 100M units for the lifetime is actually a very reasonable goal.

My prediction:
2009 - 14M units, slim model introduced at same Arcade price point
2010 - 14M units, slim "on-line only" model introduced at $129 price point, Halo 4 ships.
2011 - 20M units, "on-line only" model down to $99, High-end models incorporate 3DTV, IPTV, DVR, Gears 3D ships.
2012 - 20M units, new set of standard controllers (motion based?) introduced
2013 - 15M old on-line only model offered at $60, new on-line only (with new features) is at $133,
2014 - 12M gradual decline due to competitors new gen
2015 - 7M A brand new machine from Microsoft, with new architecture introduced.

So by 2015 the 360 may be well beyond 100M IB, with 50M paying Live subsribers producing around $4B in subscription revenue + $3B in game royalties.

Well done on the whole "overtracked in Others thing ;)"

However I feel you're looking at this with only history to back it up. Ok past trends are valid but just because 360 has had its three years does that mean it HAS to go down. Is it that hard to believe this year sales could top last years?

Neither of us can say until we are in at least Feb, to gauge anything we need to see how the 360 fairs at mass market price in a slow time on the year.

and please no "360 fans, you need to realize" thats very ... uhh

Edit - I almost forgot to say, 50M? WTF

No Bigjon thats coming across very fanboyish of you.

100 million! holy crap I dought it.

You do realize this is the X360's 4 year out, they'll probably sell either slightly less then what they sold last year for 2009 or slightly more, so the peak year for the X360 will be 2008 or 2009, it'll just start going down hill after that and as soon as sales aren't looking good Microsoft will release the 720.

But it should sell about 60 million LTD, that's a huge improvement from the Xbox

I don´t know about the rest of you guys, but I think that 2nd and 3rd place consoles selling 45-60 million is pretty damn good.

We have found our new MS insider here!    

With the recession deepening this year I'm going conservative. Make it 40m end of 09, 50m end of 10. While 2012 is more likely for the Nextbox release I'm guessing fall 2011 because of an incoming bombshell from Ninty. So just 8 for 2011.

Unlike the black box MS could make money on a $149.99 360 with a small HD. A little bundling to clear inventories should put it around 65m when support is fazed out in 2013. If I'm wrong and the next Big Event is 2012 then it's crispy crow w humble pie.

Can you remember your 10th post?

It will ship between 65 million at the lowest end, and 80 million at the highest end.

What I think will happen, shipping wise is this:

2009 - 16 million shipped. Peak year due to strong forward momentum, and a stagnant (compared to 08) Q4.
2010 - 12 million shipped. Starts dropping. MS continues to prop up the console with new games, as they slowly gear up for X720.
2011 - 7 million shipped. Continued waning support as next-gen is incoming.
2012 - 4 million shipped. Still selling
2013+ 5 million shipped. Continues to have decent sellthrough with next-gen in full effect.

That'd put it at 72 million, which is a good middle-of-the-road number.

@mrstickball

Interesting....I´d like to read your predictions for the PS3 and Wii as well (both lowest end and highest end scenarios).