I think my point is though... it's irrelvent.  Since the two numbers between 90 and now are so similar.

The real issue to worry about is that actually there were about 10,000 more household then that in 1990.  About 93 Million.

I'll pull some numbers off Google if it helps:

116.8 million by the end of March 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070902803.html

Shows # of households from years 2003 (111.3mil) and down (93.3mil at 1990)
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabHH-1.pdf

50 million for the US is a lock, with 60 million possible (though would require a huge, PS2-like tail). The Wii should be close to flat this year, topping over 35 million, so shouldn't have problems the rest of the way, saturated or not. No matter what its tail looks like, I believe it has sold around 25% more than the PS2 in the same period of time, it'll be hard to screw things up that badly from here on out. According to these figures(rounded NPD), the PS2 sold under 4.7mil in its 4th year due to slim shortages, the Wii will nearly double that figure.

Honestly, the Wii is doing far better than people realize. It's wiping the floor with the PS2 at a higher price point (Wii hit $200 4 months after PS2's second price cut to $180). Look below:

PS2
2001: (7.4m)
2002: 8.42m (15.8m) <- $100 May price cut ($200)
2003: 6.32m (22.2m) <- $20 May price cut ($180)
2004: 4.63m (26.8m) <- $30 May price cut ($150), Slim model Sept
2005: 5.44m (32.3m)
2006: 4.70m (37.1m) <- $20 April price cut ($130)
2007: 3.97m (41.1m) <- Slim 2
2008: 2.50m (43.6m) <- Slim 3
2009: 1.80m (44.4m) <- $30 April price cut ($99)

Figures are rough since there's rounding, but I threw this up anyway if it can be of use. The 2004 year surprises me, regardless of the fact it had shortage problems, imagine if the Wii had a similar drop - the reaction would be crazy. Just a great example of how this is a marathon, not a sprint. People get way too crazy over weekly sales on this site.

Aie, over 30 minutes wasted. Need to stop with this...

I like c0rd's chart too...I never paid much attention to sales/sale price of PS2.

Hmm, first off, the Wii has a different appeal than both NES and PS2 and one also has to consider the relatively high sales of the competing consoles that will contribute to overall console market saturation over time, neither the NES nor the PS2 had significant competition, selling several hundred percent more than the other available consoles in their time.
There is also the point that the NES was the spearhead of the home console invasion, being the first home console with broad enough appeal to sell as much as it did (nothing before was remotely close and, no, we cannot say that the Wii is the same since it has yet to show that it will be able to beat PS2's lt sales significantly, such assumptions are premature) and the added factor of PC gaming taking a much larger chunk of the overall gaming market now than it ever did in the late 80's and early 90's.

Its a good OP, no doubt and I always enjoy TheSource's analysis but I think if there's one thing this generation ought to have taught us it is that you can't calculate and predict it simply based on previous generations and backtracking to entirely different times. Let us also remember that many of the analysis in here have been quite wrong before and often times people severely overestimate the hardware sale possibilities of the Wii (yes, the opposite is also true but being on the other end of a spectrum does not make you more correct).

That's pretty interesting... of course we can never know for sure, but it seems really feasible for Wii to attain these numbers... Pretty insane, too, imo. O_O

Theres also an important question on multiple console ownership, and console replacements due to system failure.

Since the PS2 was also a DVD player, I know of a lot of people who used the console as both a console for the kids and a DVD player for their movies, I suspect that we have that phenomenom going on today. So I suspect a reasonable proportion of those households would have bought not one but perhaps 2 or 3 PS2s.

On the other hand the Wii is reliable to a fault. Its best experiences are shared as a group and theres no convenient DVD player so my suspicion is that it can reach a greater proportion of houses than the PS2 ever did even if the sales figures don't indicate this.

For the household number...I noticed it was about 2.6 per year from 1985 to 2009 onward, so I just rounded them all up to 3.0 to make the math easier, as I don't think alot of single people are buying videogames (as they tend to be young, single or poor... or older)

I don't know that PS3/360 will slow Wii down that much. PS2 had to fight off PS1/N64/GBA early on, Xbox/GC mid-cycle, and then Wii/X360/DS/PS3 later on. Wii had to fight off X360, PS3, PS2, DS and is still trending faster than PS2 - and I doubt anyone would argue that PS1/N64/GBA were stronger competition than X360/PS3/PS2/DS.

Console ownership in the USA has gone something like this off the top of my head:

NES ~ 34m (4m may have gone to Canada and Latin America)  (247m People for 1989 Peak) 

Gen + SNES ~ 40m (258m People for peak in 1993)

PS1 + N64 + Sat ~ 52m (280m People for peak in 1998)

DC + PS2 + Xbox + GC ~77m  (287m People for peak in 2002)

PS3 + X360 + Wii currently: 56.9m  (307m People for peak in 2008)

8 Bit / USA Pop = 14%

16 Bit / USA Pop = 16%

32 & 64 Bit / USA Pop = 19%

128 Bit / USA Pop = 27%

HD & Wii / USA Pop = 19% LTD and rapidly growing...could reach ~34%

I don't see why Wii + PS3 + X360 can't reach 105m in the USA. Figure 7% growth from population alone over the last gen (307m/287m). Slow expansion of ages playing videogames...3%? Then you have the Wii lowering the barriers to entry for maybe 10% growth. Alot of people will have two or three systems this generation too if the motion control stuff works, and thats where the rest of the growth will be.

PS3 is looking like it will peak somewhere around 50-60% of where PS2 got in the USA, somewhere in the 4.3m-5.0m range. So you figure PS3 can get to half of PS2 figures (~23m), and X360 will make a run at 30m.

I think it will end up as something like this:

Game Purchasing Rates         Millions of Households        Tier  

          0.1-2/ Year                           50m                          Low Interest (prefers other entertainment) 

          2-4/ Year                              25m                          Medium Interest  (games are third or fourth favorite form of entertainment) 

          4-6/ Year                              12m                          High Interest (game are second or third favorite form of entertainment) 

          6-8/ Year                              5m                            Dedicated Gamer (Games are favorite form of entertainment) 

          8-10/ Year                            3m                            Highly Dedicated Gamer (Games are well above all other forms of entertainment)  

          10+/ Year                             2m                            Game-only-Gamer (Purchases almost no other forms of entertainment)

At the moment, the Wii attach rate is 8.6 in three years in the Americas by Nintendo's financial documents, so you have people buying about 2.8 games per year. The X360 attach rate is 8.8 through Dec - about 2.2 games per year. Most of the cross ownership I think will come in the four tiers above. People buying 10+ year will own at least two systems actively, while people buying in the other tiers will generally have two or more systems as well. Since there are 50+ highly rated games for all systems, I don't see a compelling reason for people below tier three to own more than one system as most people end up with ~10 games for a console over a period of 2-6 years. But if there are only 30 games per system you want and you play 8 per year, you'll own more than one system.