last gen the ps3 didn't really sell at all, and it had nothing to drive its sales other than people who probably wanted a more affordable blu ray player and a game or two. once software came out and the price came down, it began to move more units.
the 360 was also different. it was severely supply constrained until about february, but during its first year on the market, software sold extremely well. i recall through 2006, the audience acted as kingmaker every month, where one game would do something between 200k-500k guaranteed on the platform before gears of war was even out. that audience seems to be the one that was grown, and the basis for the current market of hugely frontloaded software sales.
number of xbox 360 games in the top ten skus for 2006:
january: 2 (cod2 #1, doa4 #8)
february: 2 (cod2 #1, fight night round 3 #2)
march: 3 (graw #2, oblivion #4, fight night round 3 #2)
april: 5 (graw #2, oblivion #3, mlb 2k6 #4, battlefield 2 #5, tomb raider legends #6)
may: 6 (graw #3, oblivion #4, fight night round 3 #6, battlefield 2 #8, mlb2k6 #9, x-men iii the game #10)
-couldn't find june listings-
july: 4 (ncaa football 07 #2, chromehounds #5, lotr battle for middle earth 2 #6, prey #7)
august: 2 (madden 07 #2, dead rising #3)
september: 2 (saints row #2, madden #5)
and then i can't find october listings, but you get the idea. this was when the platform was at about 3m units in the us. the 360 basically had to create its own platform because it seemed guaranteed at the time that sony's reign would continue unopposed through the ps3 era. so nobody was really waiting for software to hit- they joined in willing to buy the software that was hitting. i hadn't seen anything quite like it before, and i haven't since. however, i do think it contributes to the slightly higher spending habits of the xbox one audience (where more fair weather fans of the 360 might have migrated to the ps4).
unfortunately the difference again with the ps2 is that the ps2 was actually putting games out for those demographics kind of throughout its lifetime, and managed to become only more attractive to casual buyers as time went on (selling a crazy 50m units more. i'm not sure when kids are supposed to be interested in the games coming out for ps4, or why they would suddenly jump on years later.
sony in particular seems to have tried their best to kill interest in buyers purchasing their consoles at very low prices with the ps3. we know that kids and families haven't flocked to the system now- what happens when it's been ten years since the ps3 launched and sony's family market is practically nonexistent? are these people going to migrate to the ps4 because there's a lego game and the system is $300? i think they've been training adult males to buy less things with more money. it also has the effect of shunning these people to other userbases (which was a benefit to the wii and later the xbox 360/kinect, and smart phones).
i'm a lot more cynical than that, because it all seems very manufactured to me. i think publishers are honing in on the people who make them the most money, which makes sense, but it's increasingly narrow. the resurgence of open-world games isn't thanks to the success of grand theft auto (the crew, need for speed, the division, mirror's edge, and whatever upcoming games of the sort were revealed when gta v was still months away). i think it's happening because it's easier to keep a gamer involved that way. competitive multiplayer is one thing. co-op is another. huge open-world games where you play with tons of other players is yet another still, and this time two manufacturers are locking multiplayer behind a pay wall, ensuring a specific kind of dedicated audience for this upcoming generation.
