Wedbush Morgan Securities has forecast that no new home consoles will be released by the big three (aka Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo) until the year 2013 at the very earliest.
Speaking in a mammoth report issued yesterday, the company stated, “Because it is eminently clear that no new console is planned for launch in 2010 (the fifth year of the current cycle), we do not expect hardware or software sales to peak any time soon. Rather, we expect that hardware and software sales will peak, as they have in the past, in the year prior to the introduction of a new console; this cycle, we think that will happen several years from now, if at all.”
“Hence, we believe that the “peak” of the cycle will be in year n-1, with “n” representing the launch of a next generation console. As we believe that will not occur until 2013 or later, we calculate year n-1 as 2012 or later.”
Elsewhere, the report also offers sales estimations for current generation platforms up until 2011, with the Wii, unsurprisingly, taking the top spot with global sales of 93 million. However, PlayStation 3 is placed ahead of Xbox 360, with Sony’s machine selling 49 million units compared to the 360’s 44 million.