Gosen Slams 'Gimmicky' Wii Fit

[Sqrl]

Words Of Wisdom said:

Sqrl said:

Is it really that surprising though? In the last 10 weeks some ~3.8 million people have purchased a Wii and the vast majority of them probably only own one game or are at least weighing the average down considerably. 

That's not to say new purchasers shouldn't be considered, it just isn't surprising to me that dedicated gamers are offsetting this newer group.

If you want to break it down at a coverage rate of 2 to 1 there would be about 1.9 million folks in that 10+ range you were referring to.  That accounts for about 6% of the Wii user base and honestly sounds about right to me.  After all those with no games and those with lots of games are the extremes, those with fewer games are obviously going to outnumber those with a lot since everyone must enter from the bottom level and there is a constant influx of new purchasers.

The proof in whether or not nintendo is bringing in repeat customers will be in the attach ratio data over time.  If the massive influx of new gamers are not repeat customers the attach ratio will go down. It's pretty much that simple.

Even there you are assuming that these "newer gamers" who are just now buying Wii systems aren't buying more than one game and need to be offset by others.  One person I know purchased a staggering 7 games to go with his Wii right from the start.  Now it would be silly to assume that he represents a large portion of new buyers' habits, but it would be the same to assume that someone who buys a Wii with no games does the same.  About the only assumption that is even remotely safe is that each Wii owner will have at least one game for their system and I'm sure there is even an exception to that somewhere... (people who buy it for gadget testing).

Once again, with only an average and not a distribution, we don't really know. 

Your final "proof" is maybe even less accurate than you may realize.  After a year, the Wii's warrantee runs out.  At that point, there may be people who actually buy new Wiis rather than pay Nintendo's repair cost further skewing the attach ratio.  I'm sure the PS2 was a victim of this many times over.

I said "the vast majority of them probably only own one game" and I should be clear in saying I meant beyond what the console itself includes.  If you want to call this an assumption then I think we should also question the assumption that these people are prone to purchase fewer games as that is certainly a much larger assumption, yet apparently we need to disprove this rather than prove it.  It is interesting to note that the assumption that these newer gamers purchase fewer games actually strengthens the position that new hardware purchasers are less likely to have purchased more games yet, in effect the position itself strengthens the argument against it.

Nobody is debating that a point for point look at the distribution would be ideal, but as its not possible with our data we have to accept what we can look at.  What we can look at is attach ratio, and it can still give a very clear picture of the situation.

I'm really not sure if I should take this last argument too seriously.  The failure/replacement rate on the PS2 was fairly substantial by most accounts (I myself am on my 3rd PS2 and have a 320GB hard drive with all of my games loaded on it so I don't have to worry about it not reading discs) where the Wii is reportedly under 1%.  Systems like the 360 and the PS2 had common problems that are identified with their failures (RRoD and laser failures respectively), and to my knowledge the only problem the Wii has experienced was the Fan not turning on properly in WC24 mode which was alleviated by a patch. Of course there is also the point that even the folks who do have problems are more likely to get repairs due to the continued shortages. In short this is a relatively insignificant group of people...of which an unknown percentage of them might skew the numbers. I'm not seeing how this is really worth considering.