In less than a week, 2009 will be over. That brings us to 2010. I'm listing what I expect to happen below. You should do the same.

We'll have a wrap up of 2009, and the 2000s in January. But for now, lets look ahead to 2010. Feel free to skip around...looking forward to seeing your posts/responses.

Estimated Shipment Totals Through December 2009

While we don't yet have shipment results from the big three, I'm expecting results to be like this.

Figures (all estimated) are ltd shipment through December 2009, shipments in Oct-Dec 2009, games per system, and games total per system.

PS2 ~ 143m (~2m)  / ~10.85 games per PS2...i.e. ~1.5b units of sw

DS ~ 124.5m (~11m) / ~5.65 games per DS...i.e. ~700m units of sw

Wii ~ 67m (~11m) / ~7.7 games per Wii...i.e  ~515m units of sw

PSP ~ 60m (~4.25m) / ~4 games per PSP...i.e. ~240m units of sw

X360 ~ 39.5m (~6m) / ~8.8 games per X360...i.e. ~350m units of sw

PS3 ~ 34.0m (~7m) / ~7.9 games per PS3...i.e. ~270m units of sw

Here is my expectation for shipments at the end of 2010.

DS ~ 148m (~23.5m)...~5.85 games per DS...i.e ~865m sw ltd

PS2 ~ 147m (~4m)... ~10.8 games per PS2...  ~1.5b sw ltd

Wii ~ 84m (~17m)... ~8.35 games per Wii...  ~700 sw ltd

PSP ~ 70m (~10m)... ~4.1 games per PSP... ~290m sw ltd

X360 ~ 47.5m (~8m) ~9.2 games per X360... ~440m sw ltd

PS3 ~ 44m (~10m) ~ 8.3 games per PS3... ~365m sw ltd

Milestones for 2010:

The DS generation (DS & PSP) should become the first generation to top the PS2 generation (PS2 & Xbox & GC). PS2 (~147m), Xbox (~24.8m), and GC (~21.7m) will be at about 192m at the end of 2010 it looks like. DS and PSP shipments are at about 185 million through the end of December 2009. So sometime in the Spring, the DS + PSP combo should top the PS2 + Xbox + GC systems.

Current Generation SW (Wii + PS3 + X360) shipped should top 1.5 billion in 2010 in five years, really only four years for PS3/Wii. PS2 + Xbox + GC sw should top out at just over 2.0b units after 10+ years on the market. In other words, current generation software will be at 75% of last generation software in 40-50% of the time on the market. I don't think 3b units of software for the current machines is impossible, although I'm leaning toward 2.4b-2.8b at the moment, solid 20-40% growth.

Wii + PS3 + X360 Software Shipments: Peaked or Peaking?

If game purchasing rates hold up better than I expect, it could easily be the peak year for software of the Wii generation machines...so far we've seen something like this though:

FY Ending 3/200x        Wii + PS3 + X360*

2006                                 17.5

2007                                 97.1

2008                                 247.5

2009                                 417.3

* X360 software shipments are estimated

The March 2010 year is only going to be 10% higher than March 2009 year even though the hardware base grew from 103m to (an estimated) 146m. In other words, the hw base grew 42%, but sw only grew to ~470m (12%). Can't see the hardware base topping 183 million by 2011. With the masses now owning current systems game purchasing deterioration should outweigh base expansion, and thus you'd expect 2010 to be down over 2009. But it should be damn close at the least and 2010 could still beat 2009.

FY / Base (Wii+PS3+X360) / Game Shipments (Wii+PS3+360*) / Game Purchases by Base in FY

March 2007 base: 20m. 115m games purchased in March 2007 year - 5.75 games/user

March 2008 base: 56m. 248m games purchased in March 2008 year - 4.42 games/user (23% drop)

March 2009 base: 103m.  417.3m games purchased in March 2009 year - 4.05 games/user (10% drop)

*estimated X360 sw shipments by year

The current year looks like this -

March 2010 base est: 146m. ~469m games purchased in March 2010 year - 3.2 games/user (20% drop)

The question is whether April 2009-March 2010 is the peak year for software of this round of machines. Next year looks like it could go either way.

Forecast March 2011 base: 170-183m. Forecast: 2.3-2.9 games/user...390m to 530m...460m...down 2%

March 2012 base: ~196-214m...but 1.6-2.3 games/user (depends on Wii 2/PS4/X720). Definitely down. 315m-495m

I think PS3 sw will be up a little in the March 2011 year, X360 sw will be down and Wii sw will be down...so it will drop a bit more than 2% overall but we'll see.

Wild Cards:

DS2/PSP2 - I think these launch in Japan at the end of 2010. There is at least a PSP-4000 coming for sure.

Natal & "Gem" - Mainly relevant because they'll likely accompany price cuts. You'd expect Microsoft to cut price for "Gem", and Sony to cut price for "Natal". If one catches on, certainly if both do, Nintendo will cut the Wii price too.

DS - If Nintendo is close to introducing another system, or if Sony does DS will definitely see a price cut. But it performed amazingly well at $100 for Black Friday so a price cut could definitely soften the inevitable drop that will take the DS from 30m sold in a year to 0 sold in a year sometime in this decade. In other words, there are alot of reasons to look for a DS price cut in 2010.

What are you buying?

If I ever get through my backlog, I'm looking at the following games if they do come for Wii in 2010:

- Super Mario Galaxy 2

- Monster Hunter 3

- Epic Mickey

- Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces

- Shiren: The Wanderer

- Metroid: Other M

- Sin & Punishment 2

- Samurai Warriors 3

- Project Needlemouse (2D Sonic)

There really isn't anything I want for DS in 2010, at least not yet so I have a shot at getting through my DS backlog...which is like six games.

It wasn't long ago you called this console gen a "Wii generation" and now for handheld it's apparently "DS generation"...

I mean couldn't you just say this generation instead of the "DS generation" or "Wii generation" really?

Anyway, here is my expectation for the hardware shipment numbers...

PS3 - 12 million
PS2 - 4 million
PSP - 9 million
Xbox 360 - 10 million
Wii - 18 million
DS - 22 million

I just name them after the leaders.

NES/SNES/PS1/PS2/Wii  GB/GBA/DS

It works much better than 8 bit/16 bit/32 & 64 bit/128 bit/ and whatever the hell we are now.

I know that, but I think it brings more trouble saying it this way as some people may accuse you for being 'biased' because of that; last time many people did that, I think. Not me though.

I think you can simply use "this console/handheld generation" and "last console generation" instead, I don't think it would trouble anyone this way...

Anyway, I hope I haven't caused anything to this topic as my first post was more like a suggestion than anything else.

wht is shipped?

nyway

ps3 -- 9 million
xbox 360 -- 11 million (natal)
wii -- 20 million
ds -- 20 million
psp -- 5 million

games i buy:

halo reach, ffxiii, splinter cell, alan wake

67M Wii shipped by the end of 2009 seem high.

So far we have 62.6 million Wii sold, add 2 more millions for the rest of the year( 12 days to go) and maybe 1.5 million units sitting in retailers shelves and you only get like 66 millions...

Actually the numbers of 360 and PS3 seem high too.
Are you expecting most retailers to end the year with a huge amount of console sitting on their shelves ?

As for what I am buying, the list is quite long...

- MW2 ( haven't purchased it yet)

- White Knight Chronicle

- FF XIII

- Bioshock 2

- GoW3

- Dante's Inferno

- Bayonetta

- GT5

- Star Ocean

- Heavy Rain

That's Q1, I haven't looked beyond that lol.......

2009-1 million directx11 chips shipped

2010-10 million directx 11 chips shipped

consoles last year outselling directx 11

Honestly, some of the stores near me were out of Wii and PS3 on December 26 but were advertising huge incoming shipments by New Years. You probably aren't going to see a big drop from 12/19 to 12/26 either, as its five days before Christmas, and everything was super crowded on December 26. NSMB Wii was sold out everywhere I checked. Wii will probably be flat in December in the west and its up in Japan over last December so ~11m is doable. PS3 had a big December worldwide, so I don't think I'm high on it either. X360/DS/PSP on the other hand have no stock issues at all.

I predict none of my predicitions will be correct.