Armchair Speculation Pt 2

by ShadowOfTheVoid , South Carolina, Saturday, March 02, 2013, 22:25 (4287 days ago) @ Cody Miller

This gloom and doom crap has been giving me a headache. It's all you ever hear from the games media anymore. We're at the tail end of an unusually long generation and just now entering the beginning phases of the next generation (the Wii U being the only eight-gen system out right now, with the PS4 and "720" not coming out until Q4). This is when the market is always at its lowest point. They forget that these things are cyclical: a new generation of systems debuts, hardware & software sales start off slow and low, pick up steam, reach their peak several years after the system launches (and the PS3 and 360 actually didn't reach their peak until like 2011), and then decline and peter out, and their successors debut to renew the cycle all over again.

This has been the most successful generation in gaming history. The Wii, PS3, and 360 are the third, fourth, and fifth best-selling consoles ever, respectively, while the DS became the best-selling handheld system ever and the PSP becoming a surprising success as well. Also, more software sales records have been broken than ever before: Super Mario 3 sold 18 million copies, holding the record of "Best-selling non-bundled console title" until GTA: San Andreas unseated it. Now we've had close to a dozen titles (not including pack-ins) released since 2005 that have gone on to sell 20 million copies. All told, more systems and games have been sold this generation than in any prior generation. Yet despite this massive success, the games media, perhaps as part of a cynical attempt to garner readers by generating artificial controversy, proclaim that the sky is falling and that it's like 1983 all over again. Gimme a break with all the Chicken Little BS.