Next gen is killing multiplayer.

[SlitheryDee]

It's the new hardware boom, it's to be expected. Even nintendo had a good first few months with the Wii U. It's a good indication that consoles are sustainable for the foreseeable future but not enough data to predict with confidence that this generation will outsell the last.

If you look at past console releases, the trend is always strong initial sales followed by a slow taper until the consoles are phased out. In every generation that initial peak has been higher than the previous generation, and total sales across all consoles has been higher by the end of their lives. This console release has continued that trend thus far. The market is always different from generation to generation, but with seven generations of console sales data behind us we should be able predict with at least a fair amount of confidence that this generation will outsell the last just like all the others did. I'm not sure why anyone would predict otherwise with the information we have currently.

The whole "because mobile gaming" argument was one that I had an eye on when the new consoles were released, but whatever effect that has, it didn't break the trend of ever increasing console sales. Now that I see the console market following what should be a familiar pattern to all of us by now, I'm going to go ahead and declare mobile gaming to be mostly a non factor.

 

[BD2003]

If you look at past console releases, the trend is always strong initial sales followed by a slow taper until the consoles are phased out. In every generation that initial peak has been higher than the previous generation, and total sales across all consoles has been higher by the end of their lives. This console release has continued that trend thus far. The market is always different from generation to generation, but with seven generations of console sales data behind us we should be able predict with at least a fair amount of confidence that this generation will outsell the last just like all the others did. I'm not sure why anyone would predict otherwise with the information we have currently.

The whole "because mobile gaming" argument was one that I had an eye on when the new consoles were released, but whatever effect that has, it didn't break the trend of ever increasing console sales. Now that I see the console market following what should be a familiar pattern to all of us by now, I'm going to go ahead and declare mobile gaming to be mostly a non factor.

The pattern is the same shape, but every individual console has differed in terms of it's peak and the length of its tail.

If you took a look at the first few years of wii sales it'd seem obvious that it'd become the best selling console of all time. But it just ran out of steam at 100mil, which isn't even close to the PS2s 150mil. Or you could look at early PS3 sales and make the same "confident" prediction that it would never catch up to the 360.

A lot of people thought it was a pretty safe assumption that housing prices would go up forever too, and look how that turned out.

Not saying it isn't possible, but it's not the sure thing everyone is making it out to be.

 

[SlitheryDee]

The pattern is the same shape, but every individual console has differed in terms of it's peak and the length of its tail.

If you took a look at the first few years of wii sales it'd seem obvious that it'd become the best selling console of all time. But it just ran out of steam at 100mil, which isn't even close to the PS2s 150mil. Or you could look at early PS3 sales and make the same "confident" prediction that it would never catch up to the 360.

A lot of people thought it was a pretty safe assumption that housing prices would go up forever too, and look how that turned out.

Not saying it isn't possible, but it's not the sure thing everyone is making it out to be.

I'm not sure that the relative performance of each console is relevant to this argument though. From one generation to the next we often see a change in which console leads sales, but the overriding point is that the whole market increases from generation to generation. NES lead the 3rd generation over the master system, SNES lead the fourth over the Genesis and Turbografx-16, then the lead went to Sony in the 5th generation with the playstation, and they increased their lead twofold with the playstation 2 in the 6th generation, but then came a fairly evenly distributed generation with the Wii, playstation 3, and Xbox360 dividing the total market almost into even thirds by the end of their lifetimes. All that is consistent from generation to generation is that the total number of all consoles sold across all manufacturers increased healthily.

I would hazard that if you took one company out of a given generation, then sales of the others would have increased to the point that nearly the same numbers would have been met. This demonstrates that the market as a whole can still be increasing even when one or more companies falter. That nearly happened anyway in the 6th generation where the playstation 2 made up something like 80% of all console sold. There was a market of a certain size that was going to buy a certain number of consoles and it really doesn't matter which one they bought when all you're trying to do is assess the health console sales in general.

 

[BD2003]

I'm not sure that the relative performance of each console is relevant to this argument though. From one generation to the next we often see a change in which console leads sales, but the overriding point is that the whole market increases from generation to generation. NES lead the 3rd generation over the master system, SNES lead the fourth over the Genesis and Turbografx-16, then the lead went to Sony in the 5th generation with the playstation, and they increased their lead twofold with the playstation 2 in the 6th generation, but then came a fairly evenly distributed generation with the Wii, playstation 3, and Xbox360 dividing the total market almost into even thirds by the end of their lifetimes. All that is consistent from generation to generation is that the total number of all consoles sold across all manufacturers increased healthily.

I would hazard that if you took one company out of a given generation, then sales of the others would have increased to the point that nearly the same numbers would have been met. This demonstrates that the market as a whole can still be increasing even when one or more companies falter. That nearly happened anyway in the 6th generation where the playstation 2 made up something like 80% of all console sold. There was a market of a certain size that was going to buy a certain number of consoles and it really doesn't matter which one they bought when all you're trying to do is assess the health console sales in general.

I think console-style TV gaming will continue to grow. I just don't think consoles will.

Honestly I don't even think we'll ever know, because I don't believe the idea of generations will survive the decade anyway.