| Aielyn said:
As JEMC has already mentioned before me, the easiest way to identify a killer app is the impact that it has on system sales around the time that it releases. Unfortunately, it can become a problem when multiple significant games release in the same week. There is also the fact that a game can simply be the straw that sells the camel's back (heh) - a game that is just enough to make the system worth purchasing, but which isn't really the one that sold the system. Typically, we won't actually try to identify killer apps that sell 50,000 copies, because there's no reliable way to identify them. But Smash Bros is much easier to test. We'll just look at USA numbers, because you really need to look at each one at time of launch, and I can't be bothered seeking the other numbers. In the week that Smash Bros launched, the Wii saw more than double the sales it had seen a week earlier, up 81,012. The only other Wii title of any note to release that week was House of the Dead 2&3 Return, which sold just 11,834 copies in that week... far too few to explain the boost in Wii sales. Wii sales continued to be very strong (slightly stronger in the second week, in fact), with no major Wii release. All up, it looks like the release of Smash Bros sold the Wii to somewhere around 180,000 people in the first two weeks. |
So for USA
pre Brawl 67,160, Week 1 148,172 (+121%), Week 2 216,423 (+46%). Arround a 230k boost using the pre week as baseline
pre Kart 80,223, Week 1 333,130 (+315%), Week 2 123,983 (-63%) Arround 216k boost using the pre week as baseline
pre NSMB Wii 206,768, Week 1 294,086 (+42%), Week 2 521,456 (+77%) Arround 197k boost using the pre week as baseline
pre Wii Fit 148,172, Week 1 308,891 (+210%), Week 2 150,985, Arround 14k boost using the pre week as baseline
not sure how you would do Wii Sports, and Kart was a few weeks after Brawl and Wii Fit a couple weeks after and NSMB was at Xmas and had supply issues if I remember as did Brawl. Then there is the factor of esisting install base, as the install base grows the number of people that can be sold on the console by a single game decreases. Then there is the long term effects thing like Wii Fit likely sold a lot of consoles far beyond it's first week as word of mouth spread it's first week was just over a 10th of Brawl's but ended up selling almost twice as much. Plus as you said other titles launching at the same time.
So not a really reliable metric I would say, tho by that metric it does suggest that Brawl was the biggest killer app over the shot term.
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