Global TV game console sales to shrink 12 percent in 2013

BOSTON — PlayStation 4 and Xbox One will reinvigorate the TV game console market in 2014, however, the market is projected to continue the downturn in 2013, according to the latest research published by Strategy Analytics’ Connected Home Devices (CHD) service. The report, “Global TV Games Console Sales Forecast”, predicts that the new generation game consoles will grow to more than 42 million units of total annual sales in 2016, reversing the downward trend since the market peaked in 2008.

“Gamers are likely to delay game console purchase decisions and wait for the upcoming PlayStation 4 and Xbox One to hit the market in Q4. This will give rise to temporary decreased demand in PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360,” says report author, Jia Wu, Director in Strategy Analytics’ Connected Home Devices service. “As a result, we are probably going to witness the weakest game console market in 2013, even though strong demand for game consoles will dominate the consumer electronics market in this holiday season.”

The report predicts that global sales of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One will be in the 3 to 5 million units range in 2013, while it will largely depend on their pricing strategy. Global sales of the Wii U will grow to 5.5 million units, as it is facing tremendous sales pressure and competition.

“Based on the current value proposition of the new game consoles, the TV game console market is not anticipated to reach the peak level sales of the last generation, which was mainly lifted by the Wii,” notes Eric Smith, Analyst at Strategy Analytics. “Xbox One clearly has the ambition and potential to become ‘the One device’ in the living room, as implied by its name, but pay TV operators’ unknown reaction to Xbox One’s set-top box overlay strategy poses some uncertainty to the success of the console in the wider non-gaming realm.”