It's hard to remember now, but we're only four or five years out from widespread and confident predictions that the game console market was effectively dead or dying. In 2012, Wired cited mobile disruption and "the whole box-model mentality" in declaring the death of the console. Around the same time, CNN cited a "four-year tailspin" in sales for dedicated consoles (which, coincidentally, started right around the same time as the global financial crisis) to explain "why console gaming is dying."

And IGN, in its own 2012 look at the fate of the console market, offered a bold prediction for the fate of the PS4 months before it was even officially announced: "A better-graphics box at $400? Not going to work."

Today, those and many other relatively recent predictions of doom for the console market look downright silly. The industry analysts at NPD announced last night that the US video game market grew 11 percent in 2017 to $3.3 billion. The reason? "Video game hardware [meaning consoles] was the primary driver of overall growth," as hardware was up 27 percent for the year, to $1.27 billion.

The launch of the Nintendo Switch was a huge part of this increase, of course. We already knew that the system has been selling at a rapid clip that reportedly outpaced even Nintendo's expectations worldwide. In the US, though, "on a time-aligned basis through the first ten months on the market, Nintendo Switch has sold more consoles than any other platform in history," NPD says.

But the Switch isn't the only console success story these days. As NPD notes, "combined sales of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One continue on a record-setting pace" in the US. Together, those "high-end" consoles are selling 18 percent better than the PS3 and Xbox 360 did at the same point in their lifecycles and four percent better than the PS2/Xbox generation.

That announcement puts a point on Sony's own strong announcements of PS4 sales, which reached 73.6 million worldwide by the end of 2017 (including 5.9 million over the recent holiday season). But it's not just Sony carrying that segment of the market; Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg pointed out last week that the Xbox One outsold the PS4 in the US in December, proving it at least has some market power on this side of the Atlantic.

Even Nintendo's neglected 3DS family, which looked like it was cratering as recently as 2016, is doing well in this new supercharged console market. December was the 3DS platform's best month for hardware sales since December 2014, NPD said.

Put it all together, and it's hard to believe that the collective wisdom just a few years ago expected consoles to slowly wither away in light of competition from casual mobile games and commoditized PC hardware. Now, it seems clear the concept of a dedicated gaming machine that hooks up to the living room TV is alive and well, thanks to a wide selection of strong hardware that players want to buy.