Sales of obscure game consoles vs. non-iPad tablets

http://www.marco.org/2011/08/12/tablets-vs-obscure-video-game-consoles

by aaronbrethorst • 15 years ago

68 66 15 years ago

marco.org

vectorpush8• 15 years ago

I didn’t include the iPad’s approximately 30 million units on here because it distorted the graph’s scale too much.

Too bad, seems to me like this graph is meaningless otherwise. The comparison is completely arbitrary.

xilun0• 15 years ago

use your fingers, report 10 millions, times 3.

vectorpush8• 15 years ago

My point was that the sale of tablets vs "obscure" gaming consoles is a meaningless comparison.

masklinn3• 15 years ago

The point of the comparison seems pretty clearly made:

"Here's a bunch of console you probably never heard about. They flopped. They completely failed.

Well these non-ipad tablets have done even worse so far. Enjoy the taste of unadulterated failure."

vectorpush8• 15 years ago

I think the point of the comparison is basically: here's a bunch of console you probably never heard about. They flopped.

That's exactly my point. "Here's a bunch of [insert failed consumer electronic] you've never heard of without regard for disparate product life cycles or market environments". The data points are interchangeable so long as they follow the guideline of "consumer electronic that existed at some point in time and didn't sell well"

jannes• 15 years ago

This graph is meaningless. A lot of the game consoles probably had a lifespan of at least one year (probably more). The Android tablets and the Playbook are at most half a year old.

Knowing this it does not seem fair to me to compare their total sales figures.

mrmaddog• 15 years ago

The Nintendo Virtual Boy "was released on July 21, 1995 [... and Nintendo] discontinued it the following year" ... so no - it really was a flop that sold more units than the playbook (to date).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Boy

acangiano• 15 years ago

If the iPad was on the chart: http://awesomescreenshot.com/0b2ii1916

watmough• 15 years ago

Can you add the Sony PS2 on there too?

150 million units!

ryanwatkins• 15 years ago

Yea, here's a better one. Game consoles, both popular and unpopular, with tablets both popular and less popular :

http://www.ryanwatkins.net/images/tablet-gameconsole-sales.p...

hnsmurf• 15 years ago

It wasn't that long ago when you could have shown a similar chart with Android phones.

lukifer2• 15 years ago

The tech may be similar, but they're fundamentally different markets. Almost everybody needs a phone, but tablets are (currently) luxury items; and carriers play a far smaller role in tablets, and often none at all.

dstein• 15 years ago

A Future Shop representative told me only 5 HP WebOS tablets were sold in all Future Shop stores in Ontario.

a3camero• 15 years ago

That seems quite unlikely. If only because of HP's actual business presence in Ontario. Surely some of their Mississauga employees went to Futureshop... http://welcome.hp.com/country/ca/en/contact/office_locs.html

digikata• 15 years ago

This data would be more interesting if put into context with the category leaders at the time. The ratio of lead sales console vs "obscure" console would be nice. Even better if you can normalize time (avg monthly ratio) or plot the ratio vs launch month. That would give some idea of the non-lead tablets are on a similar sales trajectory as non-lead consoles.

masklinn3• 15 years ago

Some of them don't really fit in a given generation (the 32X was an addon to the Mega Drive/Genesis released in the later years of the console, the Mega-CD was an other addon released earlier to equip the Mega Drive against the just-released TurboGraphx16-CD, the VirtualBoy did not really fit in any category).

* The Jaguar was a 5th gen console, the generation leader was the PlayStation with ~100 million units sold. The Jaguar sold under 250000, or 0.25% of the leader, other major entrants of the generation were the N64 (33m) and the Saturn (10m)

* The CD-i was something of a hybrid console/media player (only time I saw it used was a driving school, fwiw), it's nominally part of the 4th generation whose leader was the Super Famicom/Super NES. The CD-i sold ~500k units, the SNES sold 50 million. 1%. The the other major entrant of the generation was the Mega Drive/Genesis with 40m.

* The 3DO Interactive was a 5th gen console, sold 2 million, 2% of leader (PS)

* The TurboGraphx16, I think calling it a failure is a bit of a stretch: it was a 4th gen console and sold 10m units (~20% of generation leader) while it was pretty much only available in japan, where it performed quite well indeed. Comparatively the Saturn bombed much harder (and the Dreamcast did even worse, compared to its generation leader)

Apocryphon2• 15 years ago

I wish they had added the Atari Lynx, and maybe some of the NeoGeo consoles.

wmf• 15 years ago

I found these graphs pretty interesting: http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/16/the-frontiers-of-platform-a...

aresant• 15 years ago

To finish the exercise include iPhone / iPod Touch sales vs. the biggest consoles ever released and the point is made.

eg: ~100m iPhones (most recent data I could find was through Q4 2010 for aggregate):

Then compare to the top gaming platforms ever shipped:

PlayStation 154.59 million

Nintendo DS 147.86 million

Game Boy/Game Boy Color 118.69 million

Sony PlayStation 102.49 million

By that measuring stick iOS wins big vs. obscure consoles, but it also wins vs. the biggest and best.

ref - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter.s...

ref - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_conso...

cwe• 15 years ago

Had to view your source to differentiate the two Playstations you have there. The top one is PlayStation 2, with 154.59 Million.

jisaacstone• 15 years ago

should be iPads, not iPhones/iPods, to keep with the spirit of the OP

vectorpush8• 15 years ago

I am confused... the point is made more clear by comparing game consoles to phones? How? Not to mention you're comparing 4 iterations of the iPhone to arbitrary console life cycles.

If we're talking about pure numbers here, there are more substantive comparisons to be made.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_pho...

notaddicted• 15 years ago

You can write games for iPhone, therefore it is a gaming platform.

Also AFAIK the four generations of iPhones can all run the same software, which in a way makes it equivalent to a single console lifecycle, since consoles are never forwards compatible.

arcdrag• 15 years ago

I think your logic is somewhat off, as you are considering playstation 1,2,3 to be different, while iPhone 1,2,3,4 are in the same bucket. Also consoles are generally a one per household thing. Phones aren't.

tptacek4• 15 years ago

You make a good point, but PS1, PS2, and PS3 had different developer and third party ecosystems, and iPhone 2/3/4 do not, to the same extent. There's a confounding happening here to be sure, but it would not be accurate to square iPhone 4 off against PS3, iPhone 3G/3GS against PS2, etc.

4ad2• 15 years ago

iPhone 1/2/3/4 are evolutionary devices, better hardware of same kind, same software, same software ecosystem. PS1/2/3 are different hardware architectures, different software and different software ecosystems.

martythemaniak• 15 years ago

I wonder if marco reads HN? I'd be down for some action on longbets.com:

http://martin.drashkov.com/2011/03/why-android-tablets-will-...

ck2• 15 years ago

I see that as market potential, no?

Wait 'till 10 inch clone tablets hit $100 for xmas.

(ironically hitting the OLPC pricepoint goal)

fpgeek• 15 years ago

Not including the Nook Color and other non-Honeycomb Android tablets (roughly estimated around 3 million and 4 million respectively, IIRC) distorts the results substantially, IMO.

Especially in a gaming context, my working definition of a tablet is:

1. Does it have a touchscreen?

2. Is it bigger than a smartphone?

3. Can it play Angry Birds? (a)

The Nook Color and most other non-Honeycomb Android tablets easily qualify on all 3 points.

(a) out-of-the-box with no rooting/hacking/etc

Apocryphon2• 15 years ago

Now I'm tempted to get a TurboGrafx 16.

MatthewPhillips2• 15 years ago

Marco's source for Android sales: Daring Fireball.

Another source, reported by BGR, has Android at 20% of tablet market share.[1]

[1]http://www.bgr.com/2011/08/12/android-steals-20-of-tablet-ma...

lukifer2• 15 years ago

There's a difference between units sold to retail, units sold to customers, and units that are actually in use by customers. I'm also curious if they count Nooks, which are not always used as tablets even though they run Android.

Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for non-Apple tablets. But in reality, there don't seem to be that many in the wld yet.

MatthewPhillips2• 15 years ago

I'm not saying the article is credible, I'm saying Daring Fireball isn't.

I think it's sad what Marco's rooting interest are here. It's not enough that the iPad succeed. It's competitors have to fail for him to be happy.

If the tablet really is the future of personal computing then there will be more than 1 successful platform. If not, then maybe not. Right now Best Buy is betting their business on the former. If you walk into a Best Buy they have a section for tablets equal to their section of laptops (and larger than their 1 row of desktops). Maybe Best Buy is wrong and they'll go back to a big area of laptops again. Or maybe Marco, Gruber, etc. will find a new data point that they can point to as being all-important.

swilliams• 15 years ago

The frustrating thing with all the "sales" numbers I've seen for Android based tablets is that they all seem to mention the units _shipped_, but not necessarily sold to consumers. The original article quoted by BGR still says "shipments". Is this just a semantic difference and those really are sales? I honestly can't figure that out.

And do those numbers account for customer returns as well, since there do seem to be a certain amount of anecdotal evidence to suggest that Android tablet returns are abnormally high.

Furthermore, there also seems to be a large quantity of super-cheap, and super-terrible Android based tablets [1]. Are those counted in the same numbers as better ones like the Xoom and Samsung Tabs?

I'm not trying to be snarky, just genuinely curious if people are actually BUYING Android tablets (and keeping them).

[1] http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/06/05/archos-unveiled... Crap screen, crap battery, barely any memory, < 3.0 OS.

kenjackson• 15 years ago

The problem is that in general people don't really know sales, except in limited instances. The main one being when stores can't keep items on the shelves so sales to consumers equals shipments (approximately). That's why MS knew how many Kinects sold over the holidays.

But in general there's no way for OEMs to know exactly how many Android tablets are in consumer hands.

Yhippa• 15 years ago

I get the feeling Gruber and Marco do not exactly like non-Apple platforms.

anigbrowl2• 15 years ago

Gruber bases his analysis on Google's biweekly publication of Android version distributions, observing that for the two weeks ending July 14th, only 0.9% of 'live' Android installations were running Honeycomb (Android 3.0 or 3.1). This is somewhat disingenuous, since the vast majority of Android apps run fine on earlier versions (as used mainly on smartphones).

But let's go with his Honeycomb filter anyway; the latest update from Google (August 1) shows Android 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 enjoying market shares of 0.4%, 0.7%, and 0.2% respectively, for a total of 1.3%. A 44% increase in Honeycomb tablet shipments in the space of 2 weeks seems somewhat unlikely, but a portion of that may result from 'back to school' sales; that's part of why I bought mine.

The market is going to look very different in a year. I consider myself and Android/Google fanboy, but when Motorola launched their Xoom last winter I rolled my eyes at the absurdly high price along with everyone else. It seems to me that the Honeycomb platform didn't get started properly until April, when Acer and Asus lunched products that competed with the Ipad around the $500 price point. Since then Samsung and Lenovo have released their own Honeycomb devices, and Asus claims to be selling 400k/mo. of its Eee tablet. Amazon's two forthcoming tablets are likely to sell well too, if the success of the Kindle is any guide. I see a 4:1 use ratio between iPad and equivalent Android tablets this time next year, maybe even 3:1 if Android products cluster around the $400 price point. It took Android on smartphones a few years to achieve market parity with Apple's offering.

As well as being good for consumers, this is good news for developers too. From never buying any apps for my Android phone, I'm about to drop $20 today (VPN/remote desktop, pro PDF tool, sketchbook). Although I only got the tablet last Monday (an Eee btw), it's already drastically altering my use patterns, and I feel safe in finally calling the death of the conventional PC. I find the device infinitely more satisfying and productive to use than any laptop I have ever owned, and can plug in a keyboard dock if I need to do a lot of typing.

RIM and HP are the big losers here; I can't see any reason to buy into the Blackberry OS or WebOS from either a consumer or business point of view.

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

There are probably more sales of non-Honeycomb tablets than Honeycomb ones so far. Non-Honeycomb tablets are still being launched right now, too. So yes saying all Android tablets are the ones with Honeycomb is definitely disingenuous.

davcro• 15 years ago

Last night I visited my uncle, a 50 year old rancher in Eastern Colorado. He wanted to show me videos of him calf-roping with a rodeo celebrity. I was very surprised when he brought out a Samsung Galaxy Tablet. This man is extremely computer illiterate and prides himself on ignoring modern technology. But wow did he love that tablet. He used it for everything (doesn't own a computer).

This incident convinced me that non-iPad tablets have a fighting chance. I'd like to see this exercise done again in one year. I believe non-iPads will gain more traction.

Pewpewarrows• 15 years ago

So... a company's line of tablets that's been on the market for 16 months has sold more total units than a company's line of tablets that's been on the market for 6?

This is both new and exciting.

Sniffnoy• 15 years ago

I'm just surprised to learn that the VirtualBoy outsold the 32X and the Jaguar...

r0s• 15 years ago

For all it's problems, it's a very immersive, unique experience.

Who knows, a few generations more it could have become small and portable. At the time, it looked like the future.

zmmmmm• 15 years ago

Android and other tablets have barely hit the market yet. This seems like a completely pointless comparison at this time.

floppydisk• 15 years ago

From a "units" perspective it's interesting to see the comparison. However, I think the article presents a false comparison between apples and oranges.

Gaming consoles appeal to a limited section of the market and will generally ship less units than a mobile device. For instance, in a family of four, you might find four cellphones and only one gaming system. Simple fact. I think a more interesting comparison would be between tablet sales and mobile gaming device sales.

tensor• 15 years ago

It's not clear to me why some people seem so keen on seeing a single tablet seller. History has shown numerous times how monopolies are bad and how competition benefits the consumer immensely.

The tablet market is new and still mostly luxury. I wouldn't place any bets right now, even considering Apple's head start.

Sales of obscure game consoles vs. non-iPad tablets

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