- The XB1 and PS4 have achieved their sales without subsidies. If XB1 and PS4 were subsidized at launch like the 360 (ignoring PS3 since that was a mess), the XB1 would have cost around $349 and the PS4 $299. That would have greatly increased their sales
- This generation has had to deal with a sluggish economy so far while last gen benefited from booming (although artificially inflated) economy
- This generation doesn't have a breakout populous hit like last gen's Guitar Heroes and its highest profile games are annualized series like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed.
- New games like Destiny and Watch Dogs haven't lived up to the hype.
- Nintendo is its own thing. Equating Nintendo's downfall to all consoles is like equating the downfall of westerns to all movies
Putting all this together shows that so far this generation has been targeted towards a narrower audience that was willing to pay relatively more for a console and are satisfied by the current crop of games. It also suggests that going forward there are still cards to play to accelerate sales. The XB1 has already shown that consoles are price sensitive. The inevitable future price drops should have a significant positive impact on sales. It should also be noted that this gen has had to deal with a much slower economy than last gen. Assuming that the economy continues to recover, console sales should improve with it.
This generation has yet to have a populous hit. While I don't think HaloLens will have a large impact on XB1 sales since it is a standalone product that doesn't need to be paired with the XB1 to work, I do think that Morpheus will be at least as big for the PS4 as the original Kinect was for the 360. That is going to be another spike in sales we can expect to see in the future.
Finally I think it is safe to say that the part of the console consumer base represented by Nintendo will see a contraction. However since Nintendo pursued a Blue Ocean strategy, their fate is less indicative of the industry as a whole. The Wii's meteoric success was directly tied to motion controllers. Once that fad ran out, there was nothing there to prop up the Wii U's sales. PlayStation and Xbox are not so entangled and can stand on their own. Although as mentioned above they would benefit with a populous hit like Guitar Heroes or the original Kinect.