American console installed base figures revealed
The release of Activision's financial results this morning brought with it a helpful breakdown of the installed bases of the various consoles in North America, including projections through to the end of FY2003/04.
The release of Activision's financial results this morning brought with it a helpful breakdown of the installed bases of the various consoles in North America, including projections through to the end of FY2003/04.
As you might expect, the PlayStation 2 dominates the proceedings, with a current installed base of 19.2 million units which is expected to grow to 24 million units by the end of the financial year - pretty impressive growth for a console which is thought to have reached its lifetime sales peak.
The Xbox leads the GameCube slightly, with Microsoft's console boasting 6 million installed base as against 4.7 million for Nintendo's platform. These figures are expected to grow to 8 million and 6 million for Xbox and Cube respectively by the end of the financial year, although it's not clear whether this takes into account Nintendo's recent market resurgence following the Cube price cut.
Nintendo may be trailing in the North American home platform race, but it's got the handheld market all to itself and it's clearly been taking advantage of this dominance - with an installed base of some 15.7 million units, and growth to 18 million units on the cards by the end of FY03/04.