Using sales trends from the only previous consoles to reach 100 million sales worldwide, it is my opinion that the Nintendo Wii will be the only current generation console to reach that milestone.
First, as someone who has followed video games for many years, it is obvious to me - and should be obvious to most people - that sales are not spread evenly year by year. The bulk of a console's total lifetime sales will occur during the first 60% of it's lifecycle, with numbers declining significantly during it's final years after new consoles are introduced.
Let's start by examining the Playstation 1's yearly sales. All numbers that I use in regards to Sony consoles are from Sony's yearly reports, and are based on Sony's fiscal year which runs from April 1 - to March 31. According to Sony, the PS1 ended up selling 102 million consoles total. Of those 102 million, 54 million -just over half - came in the first 4 years, and 82 million came in the first 6 years. Just 20% of the PS1's consoles were sold in it's final four years, during which time the PS2 was also on the market.
Now lets look at the Playstation 2. Although the PS2 continues to sell today, it's lifetimes sales are currently around 140 million. According to Sony, PS2 reached 100 million in a record 5 years and 9 months, for an average of over 17 million per year. The PS3 was released when the PS2 was 6 years old, and since then, PS2 has averaged around 10 million sales per year.
The key here is that a console will experience a significant reduction in yearly sales when a new console is introduced. The history of the only two consoles to reach 100 million has proven that a console will sell just 20-30% of it's total lifetime units after a new console is introduced. Since the PS1 had a 5 year window before PS2 was released, and PS2 had a 6 year window before PS3 was released, I will split the difference and use 25% as a measure of the percentage of units a console sells in it's final years, assuming a 10 year total lifecycle.
So, it appears that in order to have a realistic chance at reaching 100 million, a console must sell 75 million units before the next iteration comes to the market.
The Nintendo Wii sits comfortably at around 65 million units, with no sign of slowing down. Even if a new Wii is introduced in 2011, as many speculate, it should be well over 85 million by then.
The two HD consoles - Playstation 3 & Xbox 360 - will have a much tougher time reaching 100 million. PS3 is currently at around 34 million after 3.25 years on the market. Using Sony's past history of introducing new consoles, a new Playstation will likely be released in late 2012. So, PS3 needs to sell around 41 million units in the next 2.75 years to reach the magical 75 million mark that would give it a chance at 100 million. That averages out to around 15 million per year over those 2.75 years. Considering PS3 is expected to sell around 13 million in the current fiscal year - which is by far it's best ever - averaging 15 million is a longshot at best considering the strength of the competition this generation - something PS1 and PS2 didn't have to contend with. If Sony were to stretch the current generation - from it's standpoint - to 7 years, 100 million would be a little more realistic as it would require an average of 11 million over 3.75 years. However, If Microsoft & Nintendo begin the next generation earlier than 7 years, Sony may have no choice but to counter, and if they don't, then the 11 million required sales per year would be in jeopardy because of the increased competition from the new consoles. With three major players this generation, there is a lot of unpredictability that can ruin a company's plans.
As for Xbox 360, it's chances of reaching 100 million are extremely slim. Currently, the 360 sits at around 39 million units sold in 4.25 years. To reach 75 million in 6 years, MS would have to sell 36 million consoles in 1.75 years (20 million per year), which is not a realistic number. Even in a 7 year scenario, MS would have to sell 36 million more units in 2.75 years - which averages out to 13 million per year. This scenario, while it may seem more realistic, has several unpredictable variables. First, the 360 has never sold 13 million in a single year, and second, the 7 year "plan" can be laid to waste if Sony or Nintendo don't play along. However, in MS's favor, it's one-year head start gives them an advantage over Sony and Nintendo because 7 years for MS would be 6 years for the other two.
So, it seems that Nintendo truly controls it's own destiny, and 100 million Wii's are pretty much a foregone conclusion. As far as PS3 and 360 go, there is simply too much unpredictability for me to believe that either can reach 100 million. Although I think PS3 might have a slightly better chance than 360 does, both are remote at best. Pricing scenarios over the next year to year-and-a-half will go a long way in determining each console's chances.
The total size of the market must also be taken into consideration. Last generation, with the same three players as this generation, around 185 million total consoles were sold. So far this generation, it is around 140 million. While there are new gamers this generation due to the Wii, it's very hard to accept that there could be two consoles with 100 million sales, and a third with 75-90 million. Unlike last generation, all three players are still going strong after 3+ years.
As I stated earlier, this is my opinion based on an extrapolation of available statistics. Please comment with your opinions of my deductions, as well as your own predictions.
If you are not interested in the business aspects of the game industry, please do not comment here.
A number of leaks have popped up that reference Pokemon Black and White remakes in some way. Are they all coincidences or real in 2024?
The Final Fantasy VII Rebirth combat director has expressed that he wants the final part in the trilogy to offer players "even more freedom".
I love the game so far but please don’t make the final part a mini game fest
Everytime I get to a new part in Rebirth it’s “mini game time”
Hope ya don't mind me asking since it seems like you've played it, did it feel like a decent step up from the last game or was it more like the best from the last but more polished?
It makes Remake feel like a demo.
9.5/10 imo. And I think the “mini games” did a great job of adding variety to the gameplay. Purely optional as well.
Here's my thoughts
I think it's a big step up from the first instalment, I'm enjoying it way more.
I thought keeping it just in Midgar was silly, it felt dragged out and it didn't have much variation in terms of the scenery.
However with Rebirth, as soon as you get out of Kalm you have a big world to explore and it's great to just wander round and explore.
Now that I'm half way in though, despite still liking what I'm playing, the gameplay loop is now starting to slow down on me. I've got to a new region and I'm like "Yaaay...need to go and find those towers again, oh look another special beast marker, is that a bird I see in the distance? Better follow it to another Mako Crystal"
It's like....you know how Peter Jackson was only supposed to have two Hobbit films then Warner Bros wanted a third film so he stretched the second film out as much as he could so he could keep stuff for the third film making a trilogy? Yeah it feels like that, so these mini games are a part of that overall gameplay loop to keep us going and stretch the game out overall so they have something for the third and final game.
I personally think you could have had the first instalment get you out of Midgar and through to Grasslands / Junon and the second game finishes things off.
I had a weird cycle of love/hate for all the mini games as I played through. At first I really hated the seeming need to check all these boxes while exploring the grasslands. I didn't enjoy the Gilgamesh quest initially, and thought Queen's blood was fine but didn't want to commit to it. The side quests didn't really grab me either.
Then for some reason everything in Junon region changed my mind and I did pretty much everything. I liked most of the side quests, I actually liked playing fort condor (didn't care for it in the intergrade dlc). And my interest for completing these quests stayed pretty much through to Cosmo Canyon.
Then they added that horrible Lifestream memory/battle mini game and I started getting so burnt out of it all. I just wanted to do the story. I didn't do any side quests in neibleheim and beyond except for the summon. I abandoned Gilgamesh.
So what I'm saying is I would like the third part to go back to the focused progression from remake. Keep the mini games to the gold saucer. Start the game snowboarding if you want, but from there keep the story rolling.
That's funny you say that because I did everything in the Grasslands but once in Junon I started to slow down a little until Corel where by the end I was burnt out. I'm still currently going but I'm just doing what I can while things keep getting thrown at me.
I would have preferred half of these mini game side fillers / collectibles for some really beefy side quests that really adds onto the world of FFVII.
Sounds like they hadn't really figured out what they wanted to do with Remake and this one is more of what they thought of doing which is probably why they're dragging it out to make a trilogy. Disappointed to hear it has towers cause man do i hate towers lol. It's been a while since I've played the first and it'll be a while longer to play the sequel, but it sounds like I'll enjoy it. 7 really impressed me especially after being disappointed with 15, felt like Square finally realized that FF was THEIR big franchise again.
How many hours are you into it at this point?
My friend got like 20-30 in and pretty much quit because of its mini game era. He loved and basically binged through Gran Blue compared to Rebirth
As long as it comes out on PS5 to have the entire series on one platform, do whatever you want
The combat is my favorite thing about Rebirth. Would be really cool if they can improve it even more.
I hope after FF7 Square will either give a new FF game the remake treatment. Or give some of their older titles a remake treatment like Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, even Xenogears.
Wccf tech writes: "Kingdom Come Deliverance 2's scope was impacted by the Xbox Series S hardware limitations, as developers could only make a game that was 25% bigger than its predecessor."
This is the issue with things like this
Xbox Series X is apparently to MS the worlds most powerful console
However the Series S is obviously a limitation because it’s underpowered and developers have to go for parity.
So what’s the point of the world’s most powerful console if you are holding third party developers back? They aren’t going to push themselves if they have to think about the weakest console.
The issue wouldn’t be as bad if it was just Xbox but you are also affecting the PS version aswell
I think developers need to start just taking advantage of a console and if one of them can’t do X Y and Z then f*** them…why should the others suffer. What’s MS going to do? The bigger the franchise the least chance MS are going to tell them to f*** off. Baulders Gate 3 seemed to have stood their ground and suddenly their “strict” parity rule didn’t really matter. We suddenly got super optimisation efforts for the Series S that got things sorted.
I agree, and the sad part is use normal folk saw it the second they announced their plans.
Agree 100% this is why I didn’t want the M$ Monopoly, now PS5 version will be held back too.
If PS5 Pro comes out and Series S is still a thing it’ll be interesting what differences and what devs choose to do. Really hoping Rockstar pushes the PS5 pro with GTA6 and we get the best version possible.
Good ole S indeed. Everyone knew this all along. S was holding games back...Now where the hell is Orchard i want a word with him.
More info from the author of the article, I think: https://www.reddit.com/r/ki...
Quote:
"1) I was told this info from the producer of the game Martin Klíma.
2) He specifically said the game will have only one mode.
3) And this mode is 4K 30 on PS5/XSX and 1440p 30 on XSS.
4) He said that the game is already running north of the 30 FPS cap so the performance should be stable on launch, much better than KCD1.
5) The limitation was XSS because of the 10GB memory. He said that's why they wanted to make the game 25% larger.
6) Speculation on my part: the output resolution is probably upscaled and the reason why there won't be a 60 FPS mode is because it'll most likely be very CPU heavy, like Dragon's Dogma 2 for example."
Doesn't seem like they're adding a 40fps mode on PS5/Series X for launch even if they can handle it.
I'd much rather have 1440p/60fps or even 45fps. Having just one, even with the Series S in mind, is disappointing.
Remember when xbots were adamant that the series s won’t hold back the gen?
Microsoft just needs to let go of the mandatory parity. Who cares if your grandma doesn’t understand that a game cannot be played on the S. It’s not like it she can buy you a physical game for it anyway. Before buying the game put up a notice that it only works on series X. If you’re buying for a friend-allow for a refund.
Bam. Everyone is happy. Most series s owners are for casuals that want Game Pass anyway and most likely don’t purchase most games.
If the developers want it to run on S, let them figure it out.
If it were Series X only then they'd only be selling to 25% of the Xbox Series userbase, and that's certainly not worth the time and effort into doing a port. Could just do PS5 & PC instead. No compromises needed.
“During the event, the Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 producer also revealed that on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, the game will run at 4K resolution and 30 frames per second“
Another “creative decision” right? 🤦♂️
Since you're not an amateur and clearly know more than them, can you over there and help get the game running on the S without having to sacrifice their true vision. Us gamers would really appreciate you using your wisdom for good 🙏
Thousands of games run just fine on S.
But Kingdom Come is the game that can’t. Must be one hell of a game!
Thousands of games run on PS4 and on Switch. If developers want them to run on those systems. Fine. Those two platforms still get new games. Sony isn’t making studios also make a ps4 pro version, or Nintendo a wiiu version. Microsoft technically is.
If games like Alan Wake 2, GTA6, COD, hellblade all run on S, no excuse for this 100x smaller and 100x worse looking game to be held back.
"Thousands of games run just fine on S.
But Kingdom Come is the game that can’t. Must be one hell of a game!"
Kingdom come 2 runs just fine alright. Its the SCOPE that they want. They had to cut it because of the stupid S series. Hellblade2 ran just fine too..but im pretty confident if it was just the X in mind, the scope of the game would have been much bigger.
Those are interesting observations backed with numbers. It does indeed seem like a foregone conclusion that Nintendo will end up with the most consoles sold this generation with over 100M and that Sony and MS will end up splitting the remainder closely with sub 100M units.
There are 2 factors however that make number analysis with previous generations a bit unpredictable. 1) Both MS and Sony are introducing motion controls in the middle of the generation in order to open new markets 2) all three vendors keep saying that they want to extend this generation longer than usual
Good post and without being provocative!
i think that the wii will probably make it to 100 mil but not much further.
And i think that the other HD consoles will probably make it to 75 mil with the help of there motion controls lenghtening there consoles life span.
DS will top PS2 lifetime sales
Wii will sale over 100 million units
PS3/360 will sale about 75-80 million overall.
The motion control attempt that Sony and MS are doing is not (i repeat) going to dramatically boost console sales. Gamers on HD consoles are majorily bull headed and stubborn and will not easily accept the new tech.
As far as casuals are concerned Nintendo already sold them on the Wii, it reminds me of how Gameboy/DS dominates handhelds and Sony/SNK/SEGA are trying to copy success but will fail overall.
You claim the wii is current gen but tech wise it just happens to be closer to the PS2 or the original Xbox. This is also why the wii price tag has always been so much lower then the 360 or PS3.It's also the reason why in the current console war the wii gets over looked by the 360 and PS3 fans.
The wii will never be able to play the games that the 360 or PS3 have with the same quality. For example, even a game like Rock Band for the wii is identical to the PS2 version and a dummied down version of the 360 and PS3.
Sure the wii may sell 100 million but I would hardly call it current gen, In my opinion the wii is as current gen as the PS2 (which still happens to be selling consoles).
this is a good blog, but i personally consider the wii as a late entry to the last generation of consoles, and not the current generation.