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hsrob on 02 May 2009
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Ail said:
Kasz216 said:
outlawauron said:
Soriku said:
outlawauron said:
11ht11 said:
outlawauron said:
11ht11 said:
wii games have legs

And so do PS3 and 360 games. As well as DS and PSP games.

but wii games have sexy legs

All systems have examples of sexy legs.

Wii has sexier legs

That are due to the large amount of consoles being sold, which is what the OP is about. 

Which gamerace debunked noting that such an analysis is only true for the "system sellers"... and that many games behave differently.

Meaning the analysis basically only took into account one type of game.

 

I didn't know games like CoD:Waw were system sellers on the Wii...

When hardware sales fall, pretty much every software sales fall..

Case in point.

Week of April 11th :

Others : 132k Wii sold, 801k Wii software sales.

Week of April 25th :

Others : 96k Wii sold (-28%), 549k software sales (-32%).

No huge Wii release around either date either that could have artificially boosted early April Wii sales...

So how else would you explain the decline in software sales so similar to the one in hardware ?

 

 

Couldn't it just be that the factors which affect hardware sales are the very same factors which affect software sales?

I get your point about Playstation games like Little Big Planet and agree that if they are selling a fairly consistent percentage long after their release, then yes, they have legs too.  I agree that weekly sales of a few games like Mario Kart and Wii Fit are probably proportional to weekly hardware sales and can be taken as an indication that a good portion of new hardware buyers also pick up these games.  It could also be that weekly sales are by and large proportional to userbase size. I'd doubt however that the average person picks up 6 games on the day that they purchase their hardware so i think your explanation can't be used to explain the sales of all games.

The point i think you missed in your assessment is whether or not most or all of the Playstation and Xbox games with legs (by your own assessment) also had big, or relatively big, opening weeks.  My guess, i admittedly have nothing to back this up, is that they did.  They have big or biggish openings, due to a more informed userbase or hype and then continued to sell long after release due to their quality.  If this is in fact the case then it is still fair to say that HD games are front loaded and that early sales can be an indication of the potential for long term sales.  I would suggest that a slow start for a HD game often leads to less than stellar overall sales for the game

I'm not going to say all Wii games have legs and i concede the point about some people claiming "legs" without any consideration of the size of the userbase.  I would say a higher proportion of Wii games continue to sell relatively well (perhaps in proportion to weekly sales or userbase ratios or whatever) long after release DESPITE not having big openings, and i think this is the difference.  If a Wii game opens small we can't necessarily make any conclusions about it's long term sales potential.