What the Wii did right, against all odds

[gumby_trucker]

Eurogamer also did a piece on Wii today. While the article itself seems a bit overly pessimistic, it comes with some pretty interesting data courtesy of NPD:

Regarding the declining sales of the platform:

"The immediate response from Nintendo is a global price cut for the Wii, and a line of budget software – in the UK it's now £129 for the console with a choice of game, while in the US it's $149. Reggie Fils-Aime reckons this puts the console at a crucial level of affordability, citing the PS2's ongoing indian summer as Nintendo's target. "For us this is a very important move," he says. "And in the last home console cycle, the leading system at the time sold almost 50 per cent of its volume at a price point of $149 or below." "

The article even goes on to quote Pachter saying he believes Wii will keep selling, similarly to the PS2 (but hey, it's Pachter, so do with that information whatever you wish . I was just happy to see him not hating on the console for once )

"It's that PS2 comparison that's interesting, though. "The Wii should enjoy the same success that the PS2 enjoyed from 2004 – 2009," says Pachter, "fairly robust sales and decent software sales, but declining each year." "

"Sony announced on January 31 2011 that long into its tenth year the PS2 has sold over 150 million hardware units on January 31 2011, and a mind-boggling 1.52 billion games. That works out at an average of just over ten titles sold per hardware unit. The Wii's sales stand at 86 million for hardware and 695 million for software.
That's an attach rate of 8.2 per Wii console."

The last graph below is admittedly the closest to the typical stereotype when it comes to software sales on Wii, as you'd expect it to have significantly more sales than the 360 does based on Install base alone. I for one am actually pleasantly surprised by this number, as we all know what terrible support Wii got from third parties, when it came to quality of releases and marketing effort; and yet these numbers are still pretty respectable. That being the situation, isn't it reasonable to assume sales could have up to doubled if there had been a steady stream of high-quality support from the start? If anything, this graph shows what an opportunity there was for software sales, and how 3rd parties failed to realize it...

Or in the words of Eurogamer:

"Since its earliest days one observation about the Wii has been pervasive: it doesn't have the software. More specifically, it doesn't have the third party support you'd expect for the market-leading console. Nintendo answered this point last year and, being Nintendo, did so with sales statistics: Fig 2 show an undeniably impressive 8.2 games sold per console and total software sales of 695 million units.

There's a caveat, of course. Nintendo released at the same time a list of the Wii's biggest sellers: remove the Nintendo-published and developed games from that list, and 695 million becomes 398.5 million – or an attach rate of 4.7 games per system. So far in 2011, 12 of the top 20 selling Wii games are first party."

All this is to say that in addition to acknowledging the things Wii did right, one shouldn't be so quick to condemn it for the things it (supposedly) didn't.

Also, one more thing I'd like to add after reading some of the comments this article got on Eurogamer. I'll admit there are many examples from this gen where Sony and MS have been much kinder to gamers and more supporting, but in the end of the day there really is no contest in this regard. I mean you'd have to be an idiot not to adore a company who is willing to lose billions of dollars in order to keep you and (a few) others like you happy with the kinds of experiences you demand . Seriously, it's like being payed money to play the games you want!

I'll be the first to admit that Nintendo is definitely lacking in that kind of dedication