Standard very long post warning.  

There's of course been millions of threads across the internet devoted to various claims about each systems game library and sales (e.g. Wii only moves Nintendo or kiddy games, Xbox only moves FPS', PS3, ummm, only moves Resistance).  Each, like the current one on this forum, uses only a handful of carefully selected games to make its case.  I figured instead mindlessly surfing the web before my next class  I would spend the time looking in depth at each system and its games so that you the reader of this thread can come to a more rational conclusion (the only good thing about exams, no homework or quizzes follow them ).

I went through the most recent US sales info and listed the sales figures of every game for the 360, Wii, and PS3.  I then broke it up by game type and 1st/3rd Party.  Before I start I should point that I'm aware of the limitations involved here.  The PS3 and Wii recently launched so they will have a much greater percentage of their games in the top 200 while on the other hand the 360 has had over a year to build a larger user base and impressive numbers for games like GRAW and Gears of War.  However, I think this is much closer to the real situation than looking at 3 or 4 games is.  Also, the Wii requires some fudging I think due to Wii Sports/Play and the fact that 3 crapware games were released last week which sold 14k, 8k, and 6k.  I doubt they'll be in the top 200 next week. I'll include both fudged (no Wii Play or crapware and Wii Sports at a Japan level attachment of 1,700k) and non-fudged so go with what you prefer.  I'll use corrected in any analysis I do.  Lastly, I wasn't sure where to put SPM since it's a action-RPG so I put it in adventure.

First up are some charts that detail the types of games on each system.  This gives a good idea of what kind of games are selling on each system.  Judge for yourself whether the Wii is only has party games or the 360 only has FPS'.  I'd have another category for kiddy games but there aren't enough kiddy games on the recent top 200 to make it worthwhile. 

number of games by type: (* denotes corrected Wii figures)

total sales by type (in 1,000's):

% of sales by type

A few things to note, the Wii's sports and adventure categories are high due to Wii Sports and Zelda while the PS3's FPS and racing are high because of Resistance and Motorstorm.  Wii Sports makes it difficult to analyze that since it could arguably not be counted, partially counted, fully counted and in sports, party, or both.  Since the Wii is so early in its life span it would make a pretty big difference how and where its counted.  Something that can be said though is that far from being a system with only a few types of games the Wii has games in mare categories than the other systems.  The 360's 47 games are spread across 9 genres, while the PS3 has 26 games in 8 genres and the Wii has 32 or 36 games in 11 genres.  Not only that, the Wii is the only system with games in 3 of the genres (puzzle, simulation, and adventure).  I know the 360 has games in most genres by now but they aren't selling so it wouldn't be as easy to find them I would assume.  The 360 and PS3 have 70% of their sales in just three genres, FPS/Sports/Racing compared to 46% for the Wii.

Anyways, on to the 1st party/3rd party and attach rate debates.

total number of games, sales (in 1,000s), % by 1st party/3rd party

per title sales (in 1,000s) and attach rates by 1st party/3rd party

I think this shows a couple interesting things, at the same point in their life span's the Wii is moving more 3rd party software than the PS3 is when using total sales or per game sales (PS3 has a better attach rate but that $600 induced tiny install base is hitting it hard).  If you take the developers at their word that Wii games cost between 1/4 and 1/2 as much to make and sell for 5/6 the price of a PS360 game then the Wii is somewhere between 53% and 108% of cost adjusted sales of the fabled 360 3rd party machine (my own opinion is 69%).  The Wiis lower cost and rapidly growing market share then is already being felt.  Again, I know the 360 has many games not on this list since it's been out for over a year but since is ratios I don't know how much including poorly selling games that have fallen out of the top 200 would help it here.

Lastly, I found 7 games that are on each system to compare.  4 are PS3/Wii launch period titles and 3 are more recent titles.   I know this is comparing a few games, but then only a few games have made it to all 3 systems.  These games have sold just over 1 million copies on average each so these are the type of games that can give some useful specific info to combine with the general information above.

7 multiplatform games by system by total sales/% of total sales/attach rate x 100

Again we see 3rd party games not selling as well on an attach rate basis on the Wii, but not selling at all or not at profitable rates?  The 360 has a natural advantage in the top 4 games due to its 5 million or so install base last Christmas compared with the Wii and PS3 being below 1 million.  As the 360's market share has dropped so has it's share of more recent games.  The one exception is Spiderman 3 but the sheer craptacularness of the Wii version explains that one.  The Wii version did worse than even NFS which was also terrible on the Wii.  Of the 7 games the Wii's attach rate is almost 3/4 that of the 360.  The PS3 does even better than the 360 though with it's tiny slow growing install base that's not helping 3rd parties much. 

Important things from a 3rd party perspective are that: 1) Wii games only need to sell around 30-50% as much to be as profitable as a PS360 games and these 7 are doing 33% as much as the 360 and 110% as much as the PS3 while the larger group is doing similar rates.  2) The Wii is already approaching cost adjusted parity with the 360, while having blown past the PS3, and with its much faster growing install base the situation is improving each month.  Look at the 3 recent games, the Wii versions sold 60% as much as the 360 versions and almost 150% the PS3's levels. 3) Well made Wii specific versions do much better than shovelware as can be seen by Spiderman 3 and NFS' poor showing versus Sonic, Tony Hawk, and Tiger Woods much better performance on the Wii.  Madden and CoD3 were pretty good efforts but they had a few problems were just the same game with motion controls added.  Not to mention they were launch games so they didn't have the user base to sell to during their first months. 

As a sort of addendum I also tried to break each systems sales and games down by hard core, moderate gamer, and casual/non gamer category but those are very subjective categories.  Overall I think it fits with what would be expected though maybe not as dramatic.  The 360's game sales are 54% hard/40% mod./6% casual, the PS3's are 43%/57%/0%, and the Wii is 28%/34%/37%.  Then again I counted Fight Night as a hard core game but some may argue it's just a moderate game, while I put NFS in the moderate category when it could be in hard core, and Super Monkey Ball could be considered a moderate game not a casual one.  The only thing that can be said is if you want any casual game selection you'll have to go with the Wii, while all three systems have at least a decent selection of hard core and moderate games.

Anyways, I hope this was useful in looking at 3rd party sales on each system in a more informed light.  A quick read of my posts whould show that I love the Wii and like Nintendo but despite that I'm not going to argue 3rd party games sell as well as they do on the 360 (the PS3 is another matter).  The question is do they sell so badly that 3rd parties should forswear the Wii and focus on the 360 as some Xbots claim?  Further is it pointless for 3rd parties to shell out a couple million to make a good Wii specific version of a multiplatform game?  I'd say no to both.  As for kiddy or party or FPS games, there aren't many kiddy games selling at the moment on any system and the Wii is less of a party game system than the 360 is an FPS system.  No matter how you look at it the Wii also has a much broader selection of games, which it has to as the only mass market system.  It's true Nintendo games sell a lot more than MS or Sony games but Nintendo has 5 games out, MS and Sony 4 each, who's fault is it that Nintendo games trounce MS and Sony ones in sales?  So long as 3rd party games are making a profit why should they care if people are snatching up Nintendo games also?  Well, whatever you think about those questions, I again hope that this post helped in arriving at a more thoughtful conclusion.

LONG READ.but i like how you tore apart categories one at a time, definately gives us a better picture.

Nice work. I like it when people actually provide the data and analysis.

your lucky you didn't include the PS2.. then you would have had to include 2nd parties lol.

Excellent post -- well-reasoned analysis and nice job pulling all the data together. Real data is always more complicated than human impressions, and much less subject to personal bias. Very cool.

Wow. Nice breakdown.

Sorry, but there's too much data missing. What caught my eye first was that Kameo obviously wasn't considered a 360 adventure game. Hmmm. Tetris Evolution wasn't a 360 puzzle game? Where's the Rhythm category for all the people gobbling up Guitar Hero II 360? I'm assuming the lone 360 RPG is Oblivion, but no FF XI, Enchanted Arms, or Phantasy Star Universe? No flying or simulations games on the 360 -- neither Over G Fighters or Blazing Angels managed to qualify for either category? Possibly most stunning was crediting the 360 for having only 3 racing games: Just off the top of my head -- because they were all decent -- I can think of PGR3, Need for Speed: MW, NfS: Carbon, Burnout Revenge, Test Drive Unlmited, Ridge Racer, and MotoGP. "No matter how you look at it the Wii also has a much broader selection of games, which it has to as the only mass market system." I honestly don't know how anybody could type that with a straight face.

First @ noob, the one person not in the choir, Read what I wrote. I was very specific about what information I was using. I simply used the top 200 from last week. As I said I know there are limitations to it, in fact the very limitation you bring up, the 360 has a lower percentage of its games in the top 200 than the newer Wii and PS3. I then to an extent excuse it because try finding a game from a year ago today. It's possible but it's not something the average gamer going to Wal-Mart will be able to do easily since these aren't games that will be sitting on store shelves for long, if they still are. What I meant by much broader game selection was the Wii has it's games spread more evenly throughout more of the genres, including genres that are not present to any real degree on the 360. The 360 has 26 of its top 47 selling games (remember out of top 200 not the whole library) in FPS or sports genres. The entire library can be debated though not really effectively because again if you can't buy the game what's it matter if it existed a year ago and well looking over it, the total library doesn't look much different than the 47 I listed (nearly 100 out of 270-280 seem to be FPS and sports while on the Wii it's 30-35 out of around 200 in a quick count, although most of those won't get into the top 200 and won't stay long if they do if they are even released in the US). Also given the number of games in development it's just a matter of time before the Wii has more games in its library in various non-FPS, non-Sports genres than the 360. The first part is mainly for flavor, again as I said it is limited by being only the last top 200. The key part though that I focused on was the 1st party/3rd party breakdown. The main question is are 3rd party games selling well on the Wii today compared with the 360 and PS3. How well CoD2 or Kameo sold, or didn't, last year isn't too critical in answering that question. It works on current ratios so it isn't as affected by only being games from the last 200. While the Xbox 360 would probably stand to benefit from using the entire library on the first part on the second it would probably lose a little if anything. It would be adding in early games that didn't sell ass well due to the smaller install base. I would have included the 360 situation from this time last year for a better comparison but the history section is still missing on this site. At any rate seeing as you criticized the first part and the last part I'm guessing there isn't much to criticize in the middle which is good with it being the primary part anyways. @ssj12 Looking at the list of 360 games, only 1 game is a true 1st party title, Forza 2. I think 2 of Sony's 4 are 1st party and 4 of Nintendo's 5 are 1st party. I thought about including 2nd party but that doesn't seem to provide any useful info. Thanks to the rest of you, glad you read and liked it.

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Article_3rd_party_sales_are_much_better_on_360_and_PS3_than_Wii

uh... what happened to over g fighters and blazing angels on the 360? those are flying games...

and only listing one RPG??  phantasy star universerse, oblivion, enchanted arms, and final fantasy XI are all rpgs..