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Pineapple on 31 December 2010
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RolStoppable said:
Pineapple said:

No, you're missing the point. The buying habits of consumers are that they buy 4 games the first year, 3 the next, then 2, then 1. They gradually buy less and less games.

An average person who has owned his Wii for 4 years won't buy as many games as a person who has owned it for half a year. This is why machines tend to see similar software sales in years 3, 4 and 5. Or in the Wii's scenario, year 2, 3, 4 and most likely 5 and 6.

Here's a very, very simple layout of it. I've simplified the numbers (the Wii sells a bit less than 200 million software a year), and I'm just ignoring 2006 and 2007 for now.

In 2008, the Wii sells 200 million software. All of those sales are from games released in 2008.

In 2009, the Wii sells 200 million software. Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit sell 20 million combined, and other 2008 titles account for 10 million more. Thus, there's only 170 million left for games released in 2009.

In 2010, the Wii sells 200 million software. Wii Sports Resorts, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Wii Fit Plus account for 30 million sales, Mario Kart Wii and Just Dance for another 10, and other titles for another 10. That leaves just 150 million left for titles released in 2010.

And this is going to become even more true in 2011.

So no, it's not backwards.  It's not either of the two scenarios you wrote up. It's a third.

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

That's a nice theory, but you have to remember that the evergreens released in 2008 really didn't hurt the big games of 2009. In 2010 Super Mario Galaxy 2 was released and its sales weren't hurt by the 2008 and 2009 games.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a good example, because 3D Mario sells usually in the somewhat same ballbark as Zelda, albeit two to three millions higher. Point is, they are both quite big series. What your theory shows is that second and third tier titles are affected more and more in the latter half of a console's lifecycle, but the big hitters remain quite consistent.

Why is that? Because with a fleshed out library there's less of a reason for new and existing owners to buy second and third tier titles, so the average individual sales of such games continue to decrease each year.

The only way Skyward Sword could end up selling below five million units in its lifetime is Nintendo messing up big time, kinda like they did with Other M which really wasn't what Metroid fans wanted.

I missed this post when you first posted it.

You make a very good point with second and third tier titles being affected to a larger degree than first tier titles. I hadn't considered that, and it makes sense.

I disagree that it has no effect, and that it had no effect on SMG2, but the effect might indeed be quite small.