| phisheep said: @grooski: That's a handy rule-of-thumb calculation, and makes the point. It does slightly understate the rate of games sales because of taking full-year software against end-year hardware. To get average hardware in users hands for the year you'd need to take an earlier figure. June if sales were flat through the year, but because of the Christmas boost probably August would be better. Taking the August 2008 NPD against 2008 software we get: Wii: games 70m, consoles 11.9m, ratio 5.9, months per game 2.04 X360: games 50m, consoles 10.9m, ratio 4.6, months per game 2.6 PS3: games 27m, consoles 5.3m, ratio 4.6, months per game 2.4 Which makes the same point you do, but I think the numbers are closer to the actual rate of game purchase. ... On a side note: there was a similar thread last year and I rather felt I was a lone voice in the wilderness then - it is nice to have the opportunity to discuss this sensibly! |
Yeah its true taking full year software against end year hardware slightly deflates the purchase rate, but we don't have access to more complete breakdown data to get an exact fix unfortunately. Its closer than most people would think though - most people buy a console and purchase some games at the same time no matter if its Jan 1st or Dec 31st. More games are purchased for january console sales obviously as there is most of the year to factor in. But it applies across the board to all consoles so there doesn't appear to be any advantage/disadvantage to it.
It does dispel two enormous rumors - one being that the Wii doesn't sell software outside the usual Mario/Wii Sports/Wii Fit umbrella, and the second being that the X360 sells massive loads of software per system.
