I was curious which console had the greatest number of games. I'm referring to sheer number, not getting into the important but contentious question of quality. If our listing of games here at VG Chartz is accurate, here are the, possibly surprising, results:
The Wii has the most games this generation with 807. The Xbox 360 has 568, 70% as many despite an extra year on the market. The PS3 has slightly more than half as many, 426 or 53%.
Looking at number of games compared to last generation, not surprisingly, the PS3 came in last at 16% when compared to the 2,705 games of its wildly successful and long lived PS2 predecessor. The Xbox 360 has 62% as many games as the Xbox (922). Only the Wii has outstripped its forerunner having 126% as many games as the less successful GC (643 games).
I wondered how well the number of games reflected the user base by figuring number of games per one million consoles sold. It turns out there is a very tight correlation at between 18-20 games/million consoles. Xbox360 = 19.5, PS3 = 20.3, DS = 19.2, PSP = 17.9, PS2 = 18.2. Here, once again the Wii is odd man out at 16.8 games per million installed base. This could be because of its rapid growth or possibly the proportion of long legged mega-sellers.
