Console sales by generation III-X

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Generations listed I-X in roman numerals. All console sales in millions. Majority of figure on left, consoles by generation. On right similar data but grouped by manufacturer. Yellow denotes highest sales in that generation on right.

Interesting takeaways.

Sega did well in gen IV, and crashed out after that.
Xbox has been limping alone since the glory days of the 360.
Nintendo has a habit of making some very bad and very good consoles.
Sony basically either dominates or nearly dominates every gen - and never made a flop.

And one final note. A lot of people used to say nintendo switch wasn't gen IX. You can open the spoiler below for why that is a braindead take:

Spoiler: data

The largest gap a console has EVER had from its competitors in a generation is the 3 years. If you put NS1 in gen VIII - that increases to 4 years - and if you put NS2 in gen IX it increases to 5 years. By keeping NS1 in gen IX, it remains 3 years - which has been the pattern nearly since the beginning. To say a console is in a generation which it competed with less is illogical.

 

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Also interesting to note,

the 8 years between NS1 and NS2 is the longest Nintendo has every gone between console generations

But this was comparable to the 360 to XBONE wait

 

[Veho]

I think the "Switch is not a Gen 9 console" thing was more about whining about the weak specs, not about the release date or, you know, being Nintendo's ninth console.

 

[K3Nv4]

Switch 2 sold pretty poorly in in 1983.