Console Sales down 128 million from previous gen

[stroopwafel]

Consoles hold an important niche in the industry, and aren't going anywhere.

I think this whole console vs pc 'debate' represents a false dichotomy. It kind of ignores all the realities of modern game development. If the companies that market, finance and develop games for consoles than this entire ecosystem of manufacturers and first and third party publishers won't carry over to pc if consoles go under simply b/c there are no vested interests to push these games to the consumer. First parties will take on (part of) the marketing of a third party game, investments become feasible only b/c of guaranteed marketshare and moderated platforms like consoles will make sure the games reach the consumer.

What is the pc alternative? Steam. An unmoderated trash heap of shovelware and beta acces games. No publisher in their right mind would invest 100+ million dollars to end up in this swamp(as an addition to the console release, sure). If consoles go down it will take the entire AAA games industry with it. PC's might be technically superior with it's 60fps framerate but that is irrelevant when the reality of business follows it's own logic.

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

I'd say it's changing and change is not always for the better. Good change would be to bump up creativity and adjust outdated profit models. Bad change would be to milk franchises dry to the point of sore tits and only provide variations of the same thing(*cough* Ubi, Activision, EA) and nickel and dime the consumer with shitty DLC and season passes.

Great games are still being made but I think it's definitely a vulnerable situation compared to low effort/zero cost smartphone crap and zero creativity annual releases.

 

[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.

Lol, you used vgchartz. That shit ain't boxofficemojo, the numbers on there are estimates, not the result of sales tracking. ie, they're almost always inaccurate.

doesn't change the fact that 150 million is MUCH harder to match than 80 million is.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

You're the one who made this about us harping on Nintendo when no one here did.

There's been a TON of that in the Switch threads, and Yoshi has been defending Nintendo a fair bit because of it.

I'll echo what others have said and say that mobile gaming and PC have probably taken away from a lot of, as well as the mistakes of the Wii U and Xbox One. The PS4 had some of the better marketing and decisions made, like no 24 hour always online connection of the Xbox One, or the confusion naming of the Wii U. Sony simply did things a bit better there

 

[Rangaman]

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.

You're not wrong, Microsoft and Nintendo shot themselves in the foot. But the massive boom in PC and mobile gaming suggests that consumers are moving away from consoles. You would expect Sony to suffer more adverse effects than they have. As well as that, I've known many members of the PlayStation Nation and they're all pretty loyal to the PlayStation brand. Moreso than your average Nintendo or Xbox fan.

Besides, people thought the PS3 was garbage at first and that ended up outselling the 360 by the end of its life.

 

[Supernova1138]

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.

You're not wrong, Microsoft and Nintendo shot themselves in the foot. But the massive boom in PC and mobile gaming suggests that consumers are moving away from consoles. You would expect Sony to suffer more adverse effects than they have. As well as that, I've known many members of the PlayStation Nation and they're all pretty loyal to the PlayStation brand. Moreso than your average Nintendo or Xbox fan.

Besides, people thought the PS3 was garbage at first and that ended up outselling the 360 by the end of its life.

The PS3 managed to claw its way back to second place due to fixing all the problems that plagued it early in its life, eg. very high price point, and severe lack of exclusive games combined with subpar performance on multiplatform titles. It was also helped by the Wii fad pretty much fizzling out by about 2010 and the Xbox 360 suffering from the Red Ring of Death issue and Microsoft effectively giving up on getting exclusives for the system outside of the Halo and Gears of War franchises, and Kinect games. BluRay also firmly won the format war by 2008, making the PS3 more attractive as a BluRay player vs. when it launched when the future of HD formats was uncertain and a lot of people still didn't have an HD TV at the time.

For the current gen, that isn't very likely to happen. Microsoft is still somewhat lacking in exclusives, and the fact that pretty much all their exclusives are now getting PC ports to help push Windows 10 isn't helping the Xbox One. Both Xbox One and PS4 have BluRay and its relevance is fading for those who aren't restricted to shitty internet connections due to online streaming taking off. PS4 isn't having widespread hardware failures to push users away to the competition. Microsoft's only hope of clawing back market share in consoles now is with the Scorpio, and that's only if the market cares enough to spend extra money to get games running at native 4K rather than the PS4 Pro's various upscaling tricks.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Well yeah of course. The new consoles were sold on lies, false promises, exaggerated claims, non-truths, fictions, dishonesty, fabrications, myths, inaccuracies, white lies and fibs.
Oh and giant farting spiders. Never forget the giant farting spiders of E3.

 

[bluegate]

Well yeah of course. The new consoles were sold on lies, false promises, exaggerated claims, non-truths, fictions, dishonesty, fabrications, myths, inaccuracies, white lies and fibs.
Oh and giant farting spiders. Never forget the giant farting spiders of E3.

Oh my, mind filling me in on those lies and what not?
And the farting spiders, of course.

 

[Worgen]

The only last gen console I got was the wiiU. Otherwise I just pc game. Really the only game on those that I really want to play is Bloodborne and it would still be better on pc.

 

[Rangaman]

7th gen:
Hugely successful Wii, casual explosion growth
Very successful Xbox 360, capitalizing on late start by Sony
Come from behind PS3, which ultimately outsold 360 by fixing early missteps, outstanding exclusives, free online, etc.
Handheld market still viable, largely due to Nintendo portables

8th gen:
Wii U stumbles, casual disappearance
Xbox One stumbles, bad launch strategy all around
PS4 does well right out of the gate thanks to an overall good strategy
Handheld market continues to shrink, mobile growth overtaking it

Even considering the skewed timelines, it's pretty clear why the market volume is lagging behind this gen. I think the next generation will be the most interesting since the 16 bit era. 8th is kind of a stop gap solution bridging the gap, but chances are we'll see some big things at least from Microsoft and Sony trying to outdo each other in full force.