| Pineapple said: Interesting comparison. Considering how semi-lackluster the data is, this is very nice. It has a few flaws though.
1. Competition. If you look at the sales of only the top-selling console, it drops a lot. But if you include the others, you'll see that it isn't all that doomie. I tried to find the Japanese sales of all the consoles, but this turned out hard as most the links went back here. :/ Using the VGChartz numbers, it's like this. (These are the hardware sales each gen, excluding the winning console). 3rd: ~1M
Point is, NES & SNES were immensely dominative in Japan. The Ps1 & Ps2 weren't that so much, meaning that the drop is far from as large as you method makes it seem. I'm willing to guess that 5th gen equalled the 4th gen, and that they were both closer to the 3rd gen than the numbers make it seem. I do believe that there was a rather large drop from 5th to 6th though, even moreso than your numbers make it appear.
2. 6th gen vs 7th gen. Now, 6th gen was the worst gen so far in Japan. But is the 7th gen going to be any worse? Let's have a look. The Ps2 sold ~ 230M software in Japan (http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps2soft_e.html) After 3 years on the market, it had shipped 85M software. The Wii has, after 2 and a half year on the market, sold 31M software. It's likely to be at around 50M when its 3 year date is here.
Of course, this is comparing shipped to sold. If we look at VGChartz' software sales for Ps2 after 3 years, it puts it at 42M. Now, this is of course pretty lacking, but it still gives a bit substance. All in all, it looks like Wii is on track to sell roughly as much software as the Ps2, or perhaps slightly less. Now, Ps3 + X360 is sure to outsell GC + XB. The HW difference is already at 4.1M vs 4.5M. It's probable that Ps360 should sell around 5M more, leaving it at 9M vs 4.5M in hardware. As Ps3 and X360 are really software hogs in Japan, I wouldn't be shocked if they actually sold more than double the SW of the GC+XB. All in all, I wouldn't be shocked if 7th gen turned out bigger than 6th gen in Japan. |
Very interesting and nicely thought through. I really hope that you´re right about the 7th generation.
