Software Will Not Boost Wii U Hardware Sales

[Mythmaker1]

the_dengle said:

Mythmaker1 said:

the_dengle said:

Mythmaker1 said:

Probably going to regret going to all of this effort, but...

Okay, now point at the graph and tell me where the long-term sales boost is.

Right here.

With all those ups and downs, it might be easy to forget that the Wii outsold its competitors for 4 years. And had a nice, normal, heathly sales curve for a game console. You know, peaking in its third year and falling steadily after that.

I'm sorry, I don't think you understand what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about games that, after release, increased sales of the system over the long term.  You can look at that chart you scribbled over and see that practically none of these games had much of an impact on sales even a month after release.

Are you suggesting that with zero software releases, the Wii would have sold at the same rate?

Of course not. With no software, sales would have dropped. Fast. They didn't drop because the software was selling the hardware. Hardware sales don't just increase forever, they peak, they maintain, they fall. They tend to peak quickly, within the first three years. What I circled is a sustained period of high sales due to major software releases. That is software pushing hardware.

Of course not. I said in my first post that software helps maintain an increase in hardware sales. I simply said that they don't tend to drive those long-term increases...which is true. The increases that are maintained tend to start with something like a price-cut, or a remodeling, or an add-on like Kinect, Move, or Wii Fit, but that can't be maintained without software to reinforce that increase.

Wii sales peaked in 2008, 2 years after launch. For myself, I believe that Wii Fit had a lot to do with that increase, though I think the games that came out then and later helped maintain sales as time passed.