DS install base to breakthrough 100 million by 2011; PSP 67 million
And in Europe 54 per cent of DS owners could be women
If the future was predictable, it would be the past, so we always take the forecasts of market analysts with more than a spoonful of salt. Nevertheless, the latest results of the prognosticators' art comes courtesy of UK company Screen Digest, which appropriately has cast its tea leaves over the subject of the handheld portable games console market until 2011.
Perhaps the most important assumption it makes is that the rate of DS and PSP sales won't change between now and 2011. ('Screen Digest forecast no substantive change in respective hardware buy rates', the report says.) That's a big ask, considering the sales of every games console to date have followed a rough normal distribution, with the peak of the wave occurring when the hardware price reaches the £100/$100-dollar mark, something DS has already hit, but the PSP is a long way off of.
Anyhow, using this assumption, Screen Digest predicts that by the end of 2011, PSP's global install base will be 67 million (it's currently 20-odd million), and DS's 112 million (it's currently around 41 million). This will result in 89 per cent of Japanese households owning as DS (by comparison, the original Game Boy gained 56 per cent of households).
Getting more detailed, by the end of 2007, Screen Digest reckons the territory breakdown for annual sales will be 7.5 million DSs sold in Japan, and 11 million spread between North America and Europe, Middle East and Australasia. The result of this would be a North American DS install base of 14 million and 10 million PSPs. In Europe, the breakdown would be 17 million DSs and 10 million PSPs.
Perhaps more interesting than these dry estimates however is some consumer demographic research carried out as part of the report by GameVision. Worked out via interviews with European gamers, this suggests the number of female handheld gamers is high; 54 per cent of DS owners, but more surprisingly 40 per cent of PSP owners. In addition, 52 per cent of DS gamers are aged 14 or less, while only 28 per cent of PSP are so young.
