NY Times: Hardcore game sales fade faster on Wii

A report published by the New York Times on Monday suggests that AAA game sales taper off more quickly on Wii than Xbox 360 or PS3, this despite the logical comparison of other highly promoted games.

Wario farts in the face of low attach rates

According to VG Chartz, whom The Times cites as their data source, Super Smash Bros. Brawl sales have dropped 90 percent in the first four weeks while total sales stand at an estimated 4.89 million currently. One might initially find that number to be alarming.

However, this wouldn't be the first time that a high profile game saw a sharp drop in sales after a highly publicized launch, as the report fails to mention. In similar fashion, Halo 3 sales dropped by 81 percent within its first four weeks, using the same VG Chartz estimates cited by the paper.

The occurrence of either case, independent of platform, suggest that a drop in launch sales in no way reflects gamer indifference, only that marketing arguably did its job building pre-launch buzz.

Regardless, its long been known that Wii owners on the whole don't buy as many games as Xbox 360 or PS3 owners, as indicated by its lower 3.7 yearly attach rate (4.7 for Xbox 360 and 4.6 for PS3).

Popular analyst Michael Pachter offers one explanation. "It reflects the broadening of the demographic," he told The Times. "Nintendo's market doesn't feel the same sense of urgency to buy every game that's coming out."

VGChartz cited in this feature article in NY Times

I don't know where they got "Halo 3 sales dropped by 81 percent within its first four weeks, using the same VG Chartz estimates cited by the paper". For SSBB it looks like they compared 5th week with 1st which roughly gives a 90% drop. For Halo 3 when we compare 5th week with first we get something like 97% drop:
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=6964

I think this thread is already posted I wonder why mods dont delete this?

i hate this type of "reports"......... who cares what they say?

Eh. Smash Bros. alone makes this not worth talking about. Obviously, they are either pulling numbers from a crap infested colon, or they horribly misunderstand graphs and numbers in general.

Mainstream media has always failed at reporting on the gaming industry.

they apparently also fail at MATH-- or reading a chart.


week 1 2,844837

week 4 128183

now they site an 81% drop in sales which means that week 4 had 19% of the total of week 1...

19% of week 1 is 540,000(basically)

THE PERSON COMPARED WEEK 1 WITH WEEK 2

week 2 halo 3 is 589000  which is ~20% of week 1 or about an 80% drop

if the person had actually done a week1 to week 4 comparison ...96% drop in sales NOT 81%

the person also failed to accurately do week 1 to week 4 for ssbb which shows an about 85% drop in sales 

Hardcore games? On Wii? Where?

So the game that you could argue defines the XBox 360 and was released right before the holiday season has better early sustained sales to one of Nintendo's big titles that was released durring the slow time of the year ... Yeah, I don't really know what to say about that one ...