People still believe this stuff?

Really, guys:


Wii software is selling well; it at least is around 360 software sales give or take some if you don't want to go launch-aligned.

Besides, attach rate is a terrible statistic to use, anyhow.

Attach rate is only a terrible statistic because it makes the Wii look like shit, amirite? Consider how many of those are WiiSports (packaged with every Wii) and WiiPlay (cheapest way to get a second controller) and you see how absurdly skewed those numbers are.

Software sales=/= attachment rates.

Attachment rates is HOW MUCH GAMES ON AVERAGE A GAMER HAS PER CONSOLE.

As there is many more Wii's than xbox's or PS3s of course the sale numbers are going to be high, but the sales are diluted across the high consumer base, lowering the attachment rate. So if you averaged the sales along side the amount of consoles sold the 360 has the highest attachment rate. So your point is pretty much invalid.

Attach rate is a terrible statistic to use in any console assessment because it can mean entirely different things based on the number of hardware that you are factoring in. Whether an attach rate is high is dependent on a multitude of different factors; the fact that a high attach rate can mean different things for a range of differentiating factors makes it an unreliable statistic. Comparing attach rates is worthless; it only works if the amount of hardware was the same across the board, but it clearly isn't. A console can sell a bunch of software and have a high attach rate, but it still is in bad standing if it doesn't have the hardware to back it up. And of course, it can be skewed the other way.

But also, NPD doesn't track Wii Sports sales because it is packaged with every console in the US. Wii Sports is not a separate SKU from the Wii console, therefore it is not tracked by the NPD on its own; otherwise, we'd be seeing in the top ten every month. What this means, is that 70 million figure for Wii software at the end of 23 months is, you know, US retail games.

In the US, the LTD for Wii Play is around 7 million, which is only a tenth of that total 70 million software sales, and in the US only, discluding sales from the month of November (which came out after this chart was released).

Now, why post this chart? Slumpy's post said that Wii owners own 1-2 games at most, including Wii Sports. Let's see, 15 million Wiis in US households, and 70 million plus in software that isn't Wii Sports. That's a hell of a lot more than 1 or 2.

Do some research.

Attachment rate is the real gauge of a console's long term success. The fact that its based on different factors is only an issue to you because it makes the Wii look poor. It shows how ridiculously poor the Wii is when it comes to people actually playing the console.

WiiPlay has sold 8 million units in the US (up until December). The Wii has also sold about 15.5 million units in the US, with 62 million sales outside of WiiPlay. That's under 4 games per console, and considering the attachment rate of the Wii (a far better statistic than you seem to believe), it shows that a majority of the Wii's software sales are supported by the fanboys of the console who buy about every game they can find. The rest of Wii owners (a majority of them) have one or two games and barely play it.

Even more, the numbers alone show that the Wii sells less games per console than the 360. It's even worse when you look at 3rd party sales.

My point of contention was not that it makes the Wii look bad, but rather, it is useless in a comparison between consoles. Yes, it is a good metric for looking back for the long term, but that's just it--this is not the long term. Two-three years of sales while they are still going--very much in the short term; as such, you cannot expect that these ratios will hold as we continue on. However, attach rate comparisons only work when the hardware numbers are relatively the same, which they are not in this case.

However, your numbers are off, which is primarily my mistake. The 15 million number is as of the end of November 2008, whereas this graph only goes up to September 2008 (it was released around the end of October). The attach rates given by the NPD to Gamasutra supports this. For reference, Wii hardware numbers as of September were around 12.5 million.

Now, I know the 360 attach rate is higher. Anybody can tell you that. But that's not the point. The whole reason for my original post was to point that out the Wii did not have an attach rate of 1-2 games.

So you can make comments like that, I guess?
Trashing can be fun.

... so we can have awesome comment fights like the one currently taking place above us.

SMELL THE TESTOSTERONE!