Nintendo lying about third party dominance?

[TheSource]

Nintendo wasn't lying - the Wii pie is much bigger than the PS3/360 pie.

Third parties only get 4 slices of the Wii pizza but its 30 inches vs. 7 slices of the PS3 & 360 pizzas at 12 inches each.

Don't believe me? Well here is what NPD said on the matter -

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http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/npd-wii-thirdparty-games-really-do-sell/?biz=1

We recently posted a story discussing the state of third-party software sales on Wii, which included a chart from Nintendo that inconveniently also lumped in first-party sales. Well, now we've obtained the proper third-party only sales chart (see below), which does bear out what Nintendo of America has been telling us all along: games from third parties are selling on the Wii.

In fact, when GameDaily BIZ contacted The NPD Group for more data, we discovered that for the first 20 months on the market for each console the Wii comparatively sold several million more units of third-party software in the U.S. than either the Xbox 360 or PS3. More specifically, the Wii sold 33 million units of third-party software in its first 20 months, while the Xbox 360 sold 29 million units and the PS3 sold 20 million units.

 

Click through for the full-size chart

"I actually think that given the number of comments made from industry executives at E3 (or thereabouts) about how they didn't put enough resources against development of Wii games that the industry has realized that the old adage of 'only first-party games sell on Nintendo systems' is absolutely incorrect. I think you're right that the data will cause a few eyebrows to lift," NPD industry analyst Anita Frazier commented.

So where does the perception that third-party games don't sell on Wii come from? Most likely it stems from the respective sales ratios for the three consoles. While third-party software sales comprise well over 80 percent of total game sales on both the Xbox 360 and PS3, on the Wii that number dips all the way down to 56 percent. On the whole, however, because total Wii software sales are so high, even 50-something percent of a huge chunk yields a larger total for third-party sales. But there's still no doubt that Nintendo's incredible first-party success leaves a smaller part of the Wii software market for third parties to fight over. The key, however, as Nintendo has said, is to expand that market so all can benefit. So far, so good.

UPDATE: Having read our story, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter decided to give us his take in an email: "Year-to-date (which I think is more relevant than lifetime), third parties have sold 13.4 million units of software for the Wii and 16.5 million units for the 360. That's NPD, and U.S. only. My guess is that the numbers are much closer to the same if we include Europe, and much higher for Wii if we go worldwide."

No matter how you slice it though, considering that the Xbox 360 had a year's head start on the other platforms, the Wii's third-party sales are quite good.