| Sqrl said: @h2dk, Looking at July of this year and July of last year in the US we see this...
I will also point out the extreme amounts of variance in the 360 software sales compared to steady numbers from the Wii. I am not sure what the cause of this is but it doesn't seem coincidental.
Notable (Top 20) Software Releases by Week: 1) Skate(360), NHL '08 (360) Ok for the analysis of this information: The chart shows that relative to the 360 the Wii is actually doing pretty well considering this is still its first year of release. The library is going to be much smaller and it has had far less time to get its name and its products recognized and get people thinking about them. So in that regards I think this chart is quite favorable to the Wii in terms of sales #'s. Now when you look at the software release information I provided with the chart to give the chart more meaning I think my point becomes even more clear. The head start the 360 has gives it a nice advantage in the sheer number of releases being put out. In this sample we see the 360 get 11 releases in the 10 weeks while the Wii gets 5 releases in the same time span. Considering half as many new releases and only about 20% less software sales I would call that fabulous. But considering the fact that madden is essentially a 360 release in terms of effort put into the two products, the ratio is more like 3:1 than 2:1. Now if this time next year the Wii is not seeing similar release situations that would be a cause for concern, but considering the head start the 360 had and the big titles released during this period for the console compared to the titles released for the Wii I would call these numbers very favorable for the Wii in light of the circumstances. The 360 has has a very good line-up over the last 10 weeks and to be putting up comparable numbers against that in its first year is a win in my book. And I am sure MS isn't upset about these sales numbers either =) |
This is all well and good (very good post, thanks) however, you have failed to take in to account that 2 of the top selling games for the Wii every month are "free" games. Wii Sports comes with the console, yet it is counted in the software total. Wii Play comes with a Wiimote ($40 for a Wiimote or $50 for Wiimote w/ game is a no brainer).
Lets take those "games" out and look at those same weeks in July
Week1 447,597 - 94,395 - 47,528 = 305,674
Week2 429,278 - 103,339 - 57,698 = 268,241
Week3 444,818 - 110,984 - 73,180 = 260,654
Week4 457,893 - 107,938 - 72,418 = 277,537
or roughly 278,000 per week, nearly 100,000 per week less than the 360 in it's first July. Now, take into account that by the end of the 360's first July, approximately 2,209,000 units were sold compared to Wii by the end of its first July has sold approximately 3,233,000 units. The Wii had 50% more units on the market in the same time period, but sold 25% fewer games. (Even if you keep Wii Play units counted, the average is still below 350,000 per week)
(If you do this for the past 10 weeks, the average is under 375,000 (under 420,000 including Wii Play))
I know we can argue semantics on what is considered a software sale, but if you truly want to compare apples to apples this is where it is at. If we were to look at 3rd party sales alone, the difference would be staggering.
