bigtakilla said:
It probably is dated, but still amazing numbers on game sales none the less. |
yep. I don't mean to sound like I was downplaying what Wii sold in 1st party (even discounting bundles), but the attach rate in terms of the core gaming crowd was sorely lacking. There's a reason the third parties abandoned Wii, and it wasn't because they couldn't make Wii adaptations of basically any title they wanted, it was because there simply weren't enough Wii gamers willing to buy them. Most serious gamers that owned a Wii also owned a PS3 and/or 360, and would buy the multiplats there. Some titles sold 10-20x more on 360 than the Wii version sold, despite the Wii install base being larger.
The point of it all is that aside from a relative handful of first party titles (and the top three are all ones that were heavily packed in and sold to non-gamers!), Wii software sales overall were pretty terrible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Xbox_360_video_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video_games
Once you get very far into the Wii list at all, the major AAA Nintendo franchises sold well, and beyond that things look dire. You have some shovelware dance games, and a spotting of titles selling 1M+, but where are the big third parties? I guarantee that if Wii buyers were ones that had a high attach rate to the system on average, you'd see many of the 360 top sellers on there as well, and we'd still have Wii sections with new/recent releases given significant shelf space in stores.
It all goes back to the sales on the Wii being much more similar to a vibrant console with a 40-60M install base rather than one with 100+, once you take out the Sports/Sports Resort/Fit/Play series. I can't tell you how many Wiis I have seen in homes with older people, in hospitals and retirement centers, with all manner of people that literally never bought a single game for it, or if they did, they only bought another motion fitness/bowling kind of game. Almost all of these people closeted or gave away the system once the fad wore off. 6 of the top 10 Wii titles are that motion fad nonsense. Then 100% of the remaining major sellers are 1st party games (wonderful games imho that deserve all of their success and then some). Third parties got mauled on the Wii.
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/250163/call-of-duty-a-sales-history/
With an install base larger than PS3 or 360, the Wii managed just 5% of that franchise sales, selling so poorly that they just gave up.
