Eurogamer: Wii still over PS2 in sales

[Squilliam]

KungKras said:

Squilliam said:

KungKras said:

Squilliam said:

That graph would have been completely different had they dared use software revenue rather than total game units sold.

Revenue means nothing, absolutley nothing.

Software profit on the other hand would be more enlightening.

If it was meaningless then thats the reason why the Wii had all that amazing third party support, huh? There are very good reasons why the best selling third party Nintendo franchise Just Dance started at $40. Much of the Wii third party software didn't sell unless it was $40 or less and by the time you've covered Nintendo's cut, retailers cut, publishing costs etc you have very little left to pay for development and advertising.

And why does that make revenue important at all. If you spend tons of money making a game and it doesn't sell, you have massive revenue, but negative profit. Whereas a small budget title that breaks even will be sucessfull even though the revenue was small.

All revenue will tell you is where companies put most of their recources. Why is this important? Just becuase a market has bigger amounts of cash flowing through it one direction or the other doesn't mean anything when profits and other factors, like number of customers are not taken into account. Even the analogy you made was about profits and not revenue (It's harder to profit with a cheaper price tag).

So I ask you again, why is revenue important?

Revenue per game matters. If you can sell a game for $60 vs $40 on the Wii it makes a significant difference. Once you take away publishing expenses and retailer margins the actual margin per game sold @ $40 is aproximately half that of the game sold @ $60. If you were making 2* the margin on the HD consoles and selling aproximately twice as many copies on top of that then it would explain your desire to continue selling those kinds of games.