Buying Games in Bulk?

[Bodhesatva]

mrstickball said:

milano said:
I think that the reason many people (including Kwaad above) say that the Wii has a poor attach ratio is that their definition of an attach ratio is:

No. of software units sold in a given period : No. of hardware units sold in a given period

which seems to me to be incorrect, because the software is being purchased by the whole installed userbase, not just by people buying hardware units. This would then give a low ratio for the Wii, not because the software sales are low (they aren't), but because the hardware sales are so high. To illustrate why this ratio is misleading, consider what would happen if software sales stayed the same, but hardware sales fell by 50%. The attach ratio would then double, but are people actually buying more software? No, they're not.

I can understand why some people might consider that ratio valid, because in the past someone buying a game console might buy around 5 games to go along with it. That doesn't seem to be happening with the Wii, but it does seem that Wii owners are buying games, they're just not buying them all in one go. As far as I can see from the VGChartz figures, in any given week, the Wii software sales are pretty close to the X360 sales, even though the Wii's installed user base is only about half of the X360's. Even if you take out Wii Sports (which I don't think you should) and Wii Play (arguable) the Wii's software sales are still higher relative to the userbase (by which I mean total hardware sold).

 

The only issue with the weekly tier ratio is that it doesn't give the big picture of Wii owners. Yes, sales might stay the same, if hardware went down, but for how long? Tier rates are very, very important LTD, rather than just spikes. You can give "what ifs" all you want, but the reality is that hardware sales are good, and software, to go along, is only OK. For comparison, at this time last year, the X360 was selling 250,000 units a week on average - about the same number the Wii is, minus Wii Sports/Play. What makes the tier so impressive on the X360? It sold the same number of primary software (non bundled), but did it had 1.5m less hardware units in the US at the same timeframe.

Again, this is why it's important to consider LTD ratios, and not just spikes. MHP2 for PSP in Japan was huge, and by all means, a great succuess. However, that doesn't mean that the PSP software in general is doing great. A casual observation would see that PSP software is doing decently, but upon a further investigation, the fact is, the PSP has near a 3.0 LTD tier ratio. That's absolutely abysmal, considering the DS has nearly twice that.

 

I'm going to ask this of you, since Kwaad seems to have hit the hay: 

Do you have some evidence to support your claim that Wii attach ratios are poor (or "okay")? Again, the only region with lifetime software totals is Japan, and for that region, the Wii's attach rate is quite good, and noticeably better than the PS3's. 

Also, it's quite unfair to simply ignore Wii Sports and Wii Play. We've gone over this before. Put simply: if people did not have Wii Sports/Play, then logically, they'd often buy something else to go with their Wii instead. Simply making those figures vanish into thin air is quite unfair. Perhaps including 50 percent of their value would be justified? It's not easy to pinpoint what's correct, but including none of it is obviously invalid.