Consoles still selling

I've been an active participant of the game console buying public as far back as I can remember. I read something over at Dubious Quality today that got me thinking... all three, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are still selling their now four year old consoles at an incredible rate.

Nintendo is up 16% in sales over this month last year and appears to be the clear winner in this generation. But what is striking is that the 360 is up 88% over last June and Sony 85%.

Here are the to date totals:

Wii: 29,571,000
360: 20,572,200
PS3: 12,717,000

Craziness. It's been sometime since so many years of gone by without much of a hint or substantial leak of a new next generation system. In a way this may be beneficial to game players. Time has been utilized by developers to take advantage of the consoles ins, outs and capabilities.

In fact, in just taking a quick look back in time, I think all three just be approaching the longest console cycle since the NES to Super Nintendo days (7 years). Sega never seemed to be able to make it longer then 3 years save for the Dreamcast which was 4 years from the launch of the Saturn. If you sprinkle in other console makers in the past I guess it always seems that something new is on the horizon. With the current crop it seems that the market is more predictable I guess. The oddity here is that all in the generation seem to be doing pretty well. Not one company is claiming failure by discontinuing it's product for a new and improved one.

Anyway, good for everyone I reckon.