360 will have the highest worldwide Attach Ratio ever?

[Reasonable]

I've never been of the mind a high attach rate is necessarily a great thing.

While used around the industry a lot, I've always felt it was always a rather misleading measure.

Looking at the figures it seems to me that a high attach rate tends to show:

1 - console has a relatively small install base

2 - the majority of its owners are core gamers that buy a much higher than average number of titles

3 - the console has a small number of very high selling titles


Now of course all measures change over time, so each consoles attach rate at a point in time will fluctuate with big releases, and with the overall growth (slowed more recently) of the undustry the potential final install base and total SW sales for this gen is higher than ever before.

But I feel the 360's high attach rate also betrays its rather modest install base vs the (I presumed desired by MS) highs of the PS2 and PS1.

My view is that it is actually healthier to see that attach rate slowly decrease in line with a rapidly increasing install base, as this would seem to be the indicator of true mass market success for a console.

In the end for the console seller it is better to sell 4Million units of a game with an install base of say 100Million than 4M units on an install base of 20Million. The latter gets you a better attach rate, the former gets you more console sales and market domination but a smaller attach rate.