Interestingly, when you look at historical us sales data in the US: (
http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=11067) the ps2 saw their sales jump to about 500k/mo after their pricedrop to $200 in the spring of 2002. This sales rate continued for most of it's life with a regular dip in April and varying through October with seasonal sales typically doubling from November to December. The intriguing part is Xbox 360 has sold fairly close to the original xbox on a month to month basis while having the market to itself but at a much higher pricepoint ($200 vs $300-400).
The next four months of sales data will be telling for all three platforms and should give us a very good idea how this generation will end up if historical data is anything to go by. Of course there are many variables in this generation that did not exist in the ps2 generation but like we have said in the past, "trends"
Assuming the Wii sells almost as well as ps2 did after the $200 price-cut and ps3 sells somewhere between that and the 360 sales of last year we end up with:
xbox360
2007 4.5
current
2008 8.5
2009 12.5
2010 16.5
4m/yr (250k/mo 500nov 1000dec)
wii
2007 1.1
current
2008 7.5
2009 13.9
2010 20.3
6.4m/yr (400k/mo 800nov 1600dec)
ps3
2007 .7
current
2008 5.5
2009 10.3
2010 15.1
4.8m/yr (300k/mo 600nov 1200dec)
This assumes a few things:
1) flat sales across the board (unlikely given...)
2) no price drop sales spikes
3) no key franchise sales spikes
4) no market sway (bigger install base > bigger games selection > bigger install base > bigger games selection and so on)
I think it's likely price drops will have an affect. How little or much is unknown but general consensus is it will help sales but this is dificult to measure given the sales in the month prior are likely to be down before which would cause a pricedrop in the first place so taking that into consideration I think these numbers give us *some* idea of what to expect within range and reason. We know none of these consoles will match the sales dominance of ps2 so that is a reasonable ceiling for sales performance and we have sales history of xbox360 for one year to base a future guidline on for that platform and we have some idea for demand with ps3 lately. Wii has been selling out as as soon as it hits the shelf so we don't really know the true ceiling on it but it is likely to be less than ps2 given the incredible sales of that platform.
Ps3 sales for the next few months will be telling as the demand seems to be tapering off but this may be premature. When the system is WIDELY available at all local outlets in mass quantity (not just a handful here or there) and NPD sales numbers become available the following month will be time to get a clear prediction on future trending of the platform in the US.
Worldwide could tell a very different story but trying to nail down accurate numbers in EU is near impossible. Japan is much easier to track and seems to be heavily favoring Wii at the moment but again this could be misleading based more on system availability than demand.
