It seems businesses also believe this, even when it's plainly not true.
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PS1 = 102 million units sold
PS2 = 160
PS3 = 87 million
PS4 = 117 million
PS5 = 95 million (June 2026)
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These numbers would be bad alone, but two things make them especially awful. The first is that there's no meaningful competition anymore. XBox has completely dropped the ball whereas the PS2 initially had the original XBox (which wasn't great, but had novelty going for it), Dreamcast, GameCube, and others all viably competing in the same approximate domain.
The second is that when the PS2 launched in 2000 the US population was 281 million. Now it's 349 million. I'm using US as a proxy for rest of the world, instead of the global population, since we're mostly interested in the developed world as that's the market for game consoles. So the break-even point in terms of marketshare relative to the PS2 would be 349/281*160 = 199 million units sold, and that's if we assume significant competition.
So not only are people leaving consoles, they're leaving in droves. And that leaves the companies squeezing their shrinking player bases even harder, which will make people leave even more quickly. They've lost around 50% of their adjust playerbase over the past 20 years, and at this rate I doubt game consoles will even exist in 20 more years.
It could be more interesting to look at all the consoles, not only the playstations.
N64/PS1/Saturn: 146 million units sold worldwide
GC/PS2/Dreamcast/Xbox: 214
Wii/PS3/Xbox 360: 275
WiiU/Switch/PS4/Xbox One: 338
Switch 2/PS5/Xbox Series: 150
So since only the last generation has lower number of units sold, it seems to me that the market for console is either only recently declining, or the cycle is much longer and people takes more time to buy the new generation.
You missed the biggest reason the newer consoles couldn't reach PS2 numbers: Sony managed to bring its price all the way down to $99. PS3 and PS4 only went down to $299. PS5 instead has had multiple price increases and is now way more expensive than it was at launch.
While this is true and has special reasons this gen, the PS4 was 'normal' except there was another difference there as well. Prior to the PS4, companies subsidized hardware to an extreme degree. For instance in the original XBox the video card in that system was worth significantly more than the entire console's MSRP.
But from the PS4 onward, the consoles were made of a relatively lightly modified retail hardware that was sold for profit as quickly as possible. Both the PS4 and PS5 were being sold for profit (on the hardware), less than a year after launch. I think this was due to again companies squeezing a shrinking playerbase even harder, to try to maintain profit levels.
I think the obsession on next quarter, while pretending that there's no such thing as long-term consequences, is eating companies alive. Because there are absolutely long-term consequences.
PlayStation sells better in Europe than it does in North America. XBox sells better in North America than it does in Europe, but has never sold as well globally as the PlayStation of its generation:
https://www.vgchartz.com/
https://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_date.php?reg=Global&ending...