How do you figure this as well?
The PS2/Xbox/GC sold for ~195 million worldwide.
The PS3/360/Wii are at ~247 million worldwide.
Now when you take out the casuals that got on the Wii train it probably does drop below last generation, but to call it a big decline is a bit of a stretch.
The current gen still isn't over. PS3 is still over $200, it's very likely to end outselling the Wii. Still have some big games to come, price cuts, a lot of future great old content at a cheap price in PS+ (old PS2, PS3, PS1 games) which would be great for emerging markets, multiplatforms/ports with Vita and WiiU, etc.
Btw, is you remove the casuals from Wii then you also have to remove the casuals from PS2 who played Eyetoy, Singstar, Buzz, Guitar Hero, etc. I think it isn't fair.
I think this gen there has been a massive growth in the consoles market and not only because of the Wii, because it's likely to end 2nd. And the 3rd wouldn't end too far.
Wow people are actually saying 8GB of ram is innovation. lol
No, Patcher said 'RAM makes innovation likely' which is true.
Devs are always constrained by RAM, and to have a lot of super fast RAM is great.
It will allow to do a lot of new graphical and physics tricks for high end games, less enemy repetition and will make easier to develop from low end creative indie games.
And well, consider that if current non high-end PCs sometimes can't move multi games at the same fps and details than 512MB consoles (my high end laptop struggles with RE6), it will be way more difficult for them to compete vs 8GB of GDDR5, which is way better than normal main PC RAM (not just in quantity).