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JWeinCom on 15 January 2014
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lucidium said:
JWeinCom said:
curl-6 said:
lucidium said:
curl-6 said:

No PS3 game propagated and popularized a whole genre the way Wii Sports and Wii Fit did.

No PS3 game was bundled with every single console like Wii Sports, either.

It stands to reason that more people would play the game if it came free with the console, but that's like giving a jar of marmite/vegimite away free with jars of nutella then saying Ferrero populrized marmite/vegimite.

To be accurate, Nintendo made sports games accessible to a wider audience, an aucience that wouldnt have otherwise tried it, the real question is, how popular would the game have been, had it been sold at full retail and not bundled for free.

Wii Fit was sold at retail, that did incredibly well.


Wii Sports was not bundled in Japan where it sold about 3.77 million, which was about 1 for every 4 Wiis sold.  If we assume that it would have sold at around the same rate worldwide (I think it would have sold at a higher rate in the US at least) then we can guesstimate that it would have sold about 25million copies.  So, it still would have been hugely successful. 

When the Wii released in Japan, to counter the fact it had been offered free in all other countries the retail price of Wii Sports was dropped to 2300y below standard retail titles of the day, had the game not been aggressively bundled elsewhere the price of the software in japan would have been higher.

It was also the most aggressively advertised title from the launch lineup winthin japan to parralel the attention the game was getting elsewhere as a result of the bundling, also.

So calculating the eu and us sales based on the the japanese sales that occured in the existing climate where the game was indeed heavilly bundled, doesnt make sense.

The game would have been successful regardless of course, but not to the extent of your guestimate, as it isnt taking into account the influence bundling had on the japanese sales in which youre basing them.


So, wait, we can't take marketing or pricing into account?  That's part of Nintendo's overall strategy.  And the game was obviously a low budget project, so it makes sense it would retail for lower than full price. I'm not going to argue it too much becuase it was an obviously a ballpark estimate, but those decisions are part of why the game was successful.