Skyward Sword vs. Twilight Princess (copies sold)

[mortono]

Pineapple said:

mortono said:

- More competition on the machine, coupled with no increase in software sales, results in less sales per game.

Okay so please link for me why all that is going to cause Zelda to sell less.

I can see a Zelda fan who really wants this game. Goes to the store to buy it, picks it up, but then realizes, "crap, I already bought my 1 Wii game for the year, I guess I'll have to skip it."

Silly, isn't it? People who want Zelda are going to buy Zelda. Overall sales trends don't tell us anything about the sales potential of an individual game.

Firstly, your scenario is quite flawed. A person who goes to the store to buy Zelda will obviously buy Zelda. In order for someone to go to the store to buy Zelda, though, they have to have already made the decision to buy a Zelda game.

Now, what makes a person want to buy a Zelda game? Firstly, he has to be interested in buying a game. Secondly, he has to choose to buy Zelda instead of all the other available games.

The amount of people interested in buying a game isn't increasing (see how there is no increase in software sales), but the amount of games that the person could potentially buy is increasing. Linking what I said to Zelda really isn't rocket science.

Saying that overall sales trends don't tell us anything about the sales potential of an individual game is foolish, to say the least. Sure, it doesn't give us an accurate number, but it tells you roughly how much it's going to sell. It gives a far better view of the situation than anything else we can do. Using overall sales trends is the most accurate thing we can do to estimate it at this point, even though it's quite inaccurate.

Again, you're using weird logic.

You're reversing cause and effect. You're saying the effect of games not selling well is caused by overall software sales being low, when really it's the effect of overall software sales being low that is caused by games not selling.

Overall software sales tell us what has happened, not what will happen. For instance, when I look at 2009 software sales, I don't say "because of this people will buy less games in 2010". I say "there was not enough software released in 2009 that people wanted".

That's true. Aside from the big three releases (Mario, Wii Sports, and Wii Fit), and 2008's evergreen titles, there was a drought of quality releases in 2009 for the Wii.

In any case, you're hypothesis is backwards logic. A person decides they are going to buy a game, not on the current state of software sales, but on whether the game will be good or not.

We're going in circles here. You already made this point once before.

You're trying to put this down on an individual level, instead of looking at it for the market as a whole. This is, to an extent, like trying to apply macroeconomics to a single person. It doesn't work that way.

But seeing as you insist on looking at it from a singular view, I'll try to make an explanation like that.

Case is, we know roughly how many games are going to be bought next year. It might change a bit depending on game releases, but it's without a doubt going to be in the 150-200 million range. Seeing as I can't use averages or anything as it's a single person, let's make a scenario. You're a Wii owner, and you have the money to buy 3 games.

In 2008, you're in the store, and end up deciding between Mario Kart Wii, Wii Fit, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario & Sonic or Super Mario Galaxy. (I chose these because these are the major games of the year).

In 2009, you're in the store. You can still buy 3 games. Now, the major games are Mario Kart Wii, Wii Fit Plus, Wii Fit, Wii Sports Resort, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Mario & Sonic @ Winter Olympics,

In 2010, the games you might buy are Wii Sports Resort, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Mario Kart Wii, Wii Fit Plus, Super Mario Galaxy 2,  Just Dance or Just Dance 2.

Each year, there are more very popular titles you could end up buying. If Super Smash Bros. Brawl had released in 2010, it would have met far harder competition.

And you might think that this is evened out by the increase in installed bases. It's not. This is the sole and only purpose I'm using the total software sales for - what caused them really isn't important right now - to prove that the increase in installbase doesn't really mean anything. There's still equally much software sold as there was in 2008, and there will be roughly equally much sold in 2011.

You initially made this statement "More competition on the machine, coupled with no increase in software sales, results in less sales per game."

Now I agree with the concept of competition as I did in my original reply to you. This is a real, tangible thing that you have a point in mentioning. What I think you are wrong on is the "no increase in software sales results in less sales per game". As I said before, you are reversing cause and effect.