The release of Activision"s financial results yesterday brought with it a helpful breakdown of the installed bases of the various consoles in North America, including projections through to the end of financial year 2003/04. As you might expect, the PlayStation 2 dominates the proceedings, with a current installed base of 19.2 million units. That is expected to grow to 24 million units by the end of the Activision 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 a six million-strong installed base as against 4.7 million for Nintendo"s platform. These figures are expected to grow to eight million and six million, respectively, by the end of Activision"s financial year, although it"s not clear whether this takes into account Nintendo"s recent resurgence following the GameCube price cut.
Nintendo may be trailing in the North American race, but it"s got the handheld market all to itself and has 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 financial year 2003/04.