Console Sales down 128 million from previous gen

[Rangaman]

So according to Finder, sales for consoles are much lower now than they were in the previous generation. As in "128 million people have simply disappeared from the market" lower. Not only that, but consumer interest already seems to have disappeared.

The drop off in interest in the Wii can definitely explain a chunk of the missing consumers, but the fact remains that even if you take the Wii out of the equation, the 3DS and Xbox One are struggling to hit half as many sales as their predecessors. The Wii U and the Vita have been monumental failures. If you compare the Wii U to the GCN (again, removing the anomaly that was the Wii from the equation) you find that the Wii U barely pulled over half the sales of the GCN while the Vita...well, it ain't pretty.

The system that's doing really well is the PS4, which is expected to match (or at least come close to) the sales of the PS3, likely due to Sony's loyal fanbase.

It's worth noting that this comparing 4-5 years worth of data to 8-9 years worth of data, but fatigue (as the website describes it) looks like it's already starting to set in, meaning sales aren't likely to increase over the next few years.

All of this begs the question of where those 128 million users went. My best guess (at this point) is that most of them were casuals who went out and bought the Wii. They've likely moved on to mobile gaming. The rest of them? Well, the PC market did just happen to explode a few years ago...

Whatever the case, it's not exactly a good development for the console industry.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Pc and phones are partly to blame, especially for the case of portables not doing as well. Also as for the 3DS not meeting the DS sales, the DS was owned by a lot of kids whose parents may not have felt the need to upgrade their systems, so they're still using the DSs they got all those years ago and phones and pc for minecraft. Also a lot of these people likely weren't even part of the gaming community prior to owning that system they bought last gen so their loss is more like balance being restored than an actual loss.

 

[Bad Jim]

As eager as I am to yell "PC gaming master race!", it looks like much of it is handhelds losing out to the mobile market.

 

[Yoshi178]

So according to Finder, sales for consoles are much lower now than they were in the previous generation. As in "128 million people have simply disappeared from the market" lower. Not only that, but consumer interest already seems to have disappeared.

The drop off in interest in the Wii can definitely explain a chunk of the missing consumers, but the fact remains that even if you take the Wii out of the equation, the 3DS and Xbox One are struggling to hit half as many sales as their predecessors. The Wii U and the Vita have been monumental failures. If you compare the Wii U to the GCN (again, removing the anomaly that was the Wii from the equation) you find that the Wii U barely pulled over half the sales of the GCN while the Vita...well, it ain't pretty.

The system that's doing really well is the PS4, which is expected to match (or at least come close to) the sales of the PS3, likely due to Sony's loyal fanbase.

It's worth noting that this comparing 4-5 years worth of data to 8-9 years worth of data, but fatigue (as the website describes it) looks like it's already starting to set in, meaning sales aren't likely to increase over the next few years.

All of this begs the question of where those 128 million users went. My best guess (at this point) is that most of them were casuals who went out and bought the Wii. They've likely moved on to mobile gaming. The rest of them? Well, the PC market did just happen to explode a few years ago...

Whatever the case, it's not exactly a good development for the console industry.

the 3DS and Xbox One are struggling to hit half as many sales as their predecessors.

The system that's doing really well is the PS4, which is expected to match (or at least come close to) the sales of the PS3, likely due to Sony's loyal fanbase.

DS sold 154.88 million units
PS3 sold 86.71 million units


3DS has sold 61.98 million units.
PS4 has sold 48.96 million units.

http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/

i must be out of my mind here. but i'm PRETTY sure that 154.88 million units is much harder to match than 86.71 million units.
but sure. 3DS is doing terribly. Nintendoomed and all that jazz.

 

[Raddra]

I'd buy a 3ds if they'd just make the next Final Fantasy Tactics. I need my FFT Ivalice fix.

 

[Casual Shinji]

DS sold 154.88 million units
PS3 sold 86.71 million units


3DS has sold 61.98 million units.
PS4 has sold 48.96 million units.

http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/

i must be out of my mind here. but i'm PRETTY sure that 154.88 million units is much harder to match than 86.71 million units.
but sure. 3DS is doing terribly. Nintendoomed and all that jazz.

The 3DS was also launched at the start of 2011 and the PS4 at the end of 2013, so yeah, that kind of puts those numbers in a different perspective. Same with the DS and PS3; two years apart.

OT: I assume this is a combination of the Wii bubble bursting and Japan largely moving away from home consoles.

 

[Yoshi178]

DS sold 154.88 million units
PS3 sold 86.71 million units


3DS has sold 61.98 million units.
PS4 has sold 48.96 million units.

http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/

i must be out of my mind here. but i'm PRETTY sure that 154.88 million units is much harder to match than 86.71 million units.
but sure. 3DS is doing terribly. Nintendoomed and all that jazz.

The 3DS was also launched at the start of 2011 and the PS4 at the end of 2013, so yeah, that kind of puts those numbers in a different perspective. Same with the DS and PS3; two years apart.

get back to me in 2019 when PS4 has HOPEFULLY sold more than 62 million units then.

excuse's.

 

[Casual Shinji]

get back to me in 2019 when PS4 has HOPEFULLY sold more than 62 million units then.

excuse's.

What excuses? Just saying you'd have a point with those sales numbers -- which you're obviously throwing out there to show how much better one sold than the other -- if the PS4 and 3DS came out in the same period. They didn't. The PS4 came out 2 years later.

 

[Rangaman]

the 3DS and Xbox One are struggling to hit half as many sales as their predecessors.

The system that's doing really well is the PS4, which is expected to match (or at least come close to) the sales of the PS3, likely due to Sony's loyal fanbase.

DS sold 154.88 million units
PS3 sold 86.71 million units


3DS has sold 61.98 million units.
PS4 has sold 48.96 million units.

http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/

i must be out of my mind here. but i'm PRETTY sure that 154.88 million units is much harder to match than 86.71 million units.
but sure. 3DS is doing terribly. Nintendoomed and all that jazz.

Actually the PS4 has sold 53.4 million units, that chart isn't quite up to date.

The 3DS is performing far worse than any other Nintendo handheld (unless you count the Virtual Boy, which I don't). Even the GBA shipped in excess of 80 million units. When you consider the previous totals for Nintendo's handhelds, the 3DS is really not selling as well as it should be. That's what this is about, the drop-off in sales numbers from previous generations.

I'm not flying the Nintendoomed flag anymore anyway. Even if they have to go third party, their IPs are reliably bankable enough to keep the company well in the black.

 

[baddude1337]

I think it is fair to say smartphones have taken a huge chunk out of that. They weren't a thing at the start of the last gen, but now pretty much everybody has one and to that extend a cheaper, more casual alternative to gaming.

PC is definitely also a big factor, it seems since the resurgence of PC gaming many people have opted for half decent PC's/laptops of the modern consoles.

 

[Bobular]

Most of the people I knew who were console gamers still use their Xbox360s but have switched to the PC for newer games. Many Xbox fanboys just weren't happy with the Xbone and so didn't upgrade.

Also I don't think its fair to compare consoles to handhelds, they're two separate markets as far as I'm concerned with PC & consoles on one side and handhelds and mobiles on the other.

 

[WeepingAngels]

Also I don't think its fair to compare consoles to handhelds, they're two separate markets as far as I'm concerned with PC & consoles on one side and handhelds and mobiles on the other.

...and there are those of us who play on consoles and handhelds and only rarely on PC. You are right though, comparing the two is pointless. I think they have mostly the same audience but handhelds always sell better.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

It kinda depends on what games you play. If you like Jrpgs then handhelds will be a mainstay but of course the console ones are great too.


People who play on a handheld because of the portability factor and not because of the actual games being what they most want to play though, yeah, they likely are not in the same group as a console/pc gamer and are most likely to just use their phone nowadays.

 

[Yoshi178]

get back to me in 2019 when PS4 has HOPEFULLY sold more than 62 million units then.

excuse's.

What excuses? Just saying you'd have a point with those sales numbers -- which you're obviously throwing out there to show how much better one sold than the other -- if the PS4 and 3DS came out in the same period. They didn't. The PS4 came out 2 years later.

no i was throwing those numbers out there to show that just because you're not reaching 150 million sales doesn't mean the hardware is a failure.

yeah the 3DS hasn't sold half of what the DS did but that doesn't mean it's doing terribly by any means

but of course. Nintendoomed as always and what not.

 

[Casual Shinji]

no i was throwing those numbers out there to show that just because you're not reaching 150 million sales doesn't mean the hardware is a failure.

yeah the 3DS hasn't sold half of what the DS did but that doesn't mean it's doing terribly by any means

but of course. Nintendoomed as always and what not.

Nobody here said that. The OP said both the Xbone and 3DS are struggling to meet the halfway point that the previous systems did, and that this was a sign of consoles sales in general shrinking. You're the one who made this about us harping on Nintendo when no one here did.

 

[stroopwafel]

The market changed a lot in those years. 2006/7 saw the advent of smartphones but didn't dominate the casual market like it does now. The Wii userbase attracting millions outside the 'core' audience which now largely dropped off(most likely to tablets and smartphones) and same goes for handhelds. Digital and streaming media still being in it's(relative) infancy so PS3 also serving largely as a cheap bluray player for consumers. Japan losing interest in console games was a trend that already began with the launch of the PS3 so I don't really think it matters much in those statistics(espescially since that market is now also largely being compensated by sales in China which strict censorship rules eased up a bit). Japan still has a dedicated niche of 'core' gamers which actually seem to grow in numbers a bit if you consider sales of high-profile titles like FF15.

As for Nintendo; losses that would put some other company out of business hardly make a dent in their finances that is how much reserves they have. I wonder why they still even bother with consoles. Their IPs generate enough revenue on their own and they could easily become the Japanese equivalent of Disney; sustaining high profit through trademarks, merchandise, theme parks and the occasional shitty cartoon. Few companies can make as many bad decisions as Nintendo and just shrug it off. Also if you consider the massive success of a shitty smartphone app like Pokemon Go I doubt the higher ups at Nintendo won't scratch their heads if the Switch fails. If it's even on their list of priorities at all.

All things considered one thing is blatantly sure though and that is that the ceiling for AAA game development has definitely been reached. The amount of companies that are still able to make such games reduce with every passing year and there comes a point that making these games just isn't commercially feasible anymore. Sales projections become ridiculously high(often 5 million minimum) and in a shrinking market with the exception of a select few titles I just don't see that happening. Espescially not when companies often go out of business if their game fails financially(for example THQ or Rebellion). Capcom also has very marginal reserves so if they have more titles that bomb the future of that company is looking bleak. It's fortunate that FF15 was a big success b/c considering the corporate structure of Squeenix I see them taking the Konami route(they are already heavily invested in diversification of their portfolio).

As long as there is a demand for quality gaming then these games will most likely continue to be made but expect franchise milking, shitty DLC practices and a lot less creative risks. My hope is set on the succesful outliers like From Software and CD Projekt.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

The system that's doing really well is the PS4, likely due to Sony's loyal fanbase.

Is it really though? I'm almost certain the only reason it is doing well is because all its competitors fucked up so badly. The Xbone was regarded as trash even before it was released, and the Wii-U's head start meant nothing without the games the mainstream gamer wanted to play.

 

[CaitSeith]

I remember this market contraction has been happening for years. Lots of development studios closed or being bought by big corporations. Mobile games surpassing console games in sales. Motion controls bubble bursting. Games selling tens of millions of copies in the first week being considered launch failures in sales numbers. And so on...

 

[Skatalite]

We're still in this console generation. Kind of weird to compare its sales against consoles that have been going for over 10 years now.

 

[Fox12]

I'm not too worried. My single, 55 year old, business woman cousin ought a wii. She's never touched a game in her life. The wii had a lot of appeal to non-gamers. The Wii was lightning in the bottle. I'm not surprised that a lot of people moved onto the next fad. The type of people who ought a wii for the novelty probably won't ever need another console anyway. The same is true for the 3ds. As much as I like it, I don't see kids playing handhelds anymore. I see them playing on phones and tablets. When I was a kid everyone had a handheld.

And yeah, Steam is probably part of that too. Not that long ago PC gaming was dead. It was a none entity. Now it's thriving. The mere fact that there are more options available means that some people are going to drift towards that. It doesn't mean that consoles are going to be replaced by the "pc master race." Consoles hold an important niche in the industry, and aren't going anywhere.

Gaming as a whole seems to be growing, and that's what matters.