Bruce Everiss, a veteran games industry marketer, shares his thoughts on what will happen in 2008 for the video gaming industry.

According to VG Chartz there are now 8.71 million Sony PS3s sold to end users, whilst the Microsoft Xbox 360 has sold nearly twice as many at 16.02 million, but has been overtaken by the Nintendo Wii with 19.45 million. All three of these are dwarfed by ownership of the Nintendo DS which has sold 64.92million units. The PSP continues to sell with 29.79 million but most of these are used as media players, not as gaming machines.

What is certain is that this generation is still in it’s infancy. There are still over 130 million owners of last generation consoles who have yet to upgrade (mainly PS2 owners waiting to see if the PS3 will be worth buying).

A big factor this generation will be multiple machine ownership. To a far higher level than in previous generations. This is because there are so many must have games that are platform exclusives. This means that the real war between Microsoft and Sony will increasingly be fought between Xbox Live and Playstation Home. So expect both companies to put a lot of effort into these online platforms.

A big tactic this generation has been to stratify each console into a product range and to bundle games with consoles to give higher perceived value (something that was overdone in the days of the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST). Expect this to be continued this year with top end versions of the 360 and PS3 featuring large hard drives and enticing bundles of AAA games.

Check out the blog, it is worth the read. And this is only part one of the posting. The second part can be found here... http://www.bruceongames.com/2008/01/08/what-will-2008-bring-to-video-gam...