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Jereel Hunter on 06 February 2015
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ArchangelMadzz said:
Jereel Hunter said:

Well, there's one huge reason to suggest the RROD did not help Xbox sales numbers - attach ratio. 360's was the best of all consoles... in history. If I buy a console, and 15 games, and it dies, I don't say "well, looks like it's time to get another 360 and another 15 games". Either 360 was a preferred gaming machine by such a large margin that the attach ratio was notably higher despite a large % of sales being replacements, or RROD had minimal impact on sales. 

You'd think that would be the case but it really isn't. The current attach rate for the 360 (vgchartz) is 11.182 Games per system. If 10 million sales were from RROD and NONE of these people bought games the attach rate would be 12.682. 

This is only a 1.5 game difference, very feasible. 

PS: I don't think RROD sales were near 10 million. Even if it was 5 million extra sells with no games the attach rate would only change by 0.733 games. And you have to remember that if someone got a new 360 it was probably a nice bundle deal that got them a free game or 2. 

It's easy to call small numbers feasible, if they aren't attributed their full significance. When talking about attach ratio, 1.5, or even .733 is quite significant! The 360's is the best in history with 11.19, and 6% ahead of the PS3. If 10 million sales were due to RROD, that attach ratio would make it a whopping 17% better than the PS3, 11% better in the case of 5 million. That's huge, especially considering the high level of 3rd party overlap. A bundled game with 5 or 10 million units would be hardly a blip on attach ratio a .06 or .12, respectively. 

Bear in mind another point though - studies on console usage suggested strongly that RROD tended to hit so hard because of the sheer volume of use of the 360s, and that the failure rate would have been much lower had it received the average use of it's competitors during the first two years after launch. Some level of failures are expected (and experienced by other consoles as well), and part of the RROD problem was the simple fact that 360 owners owned and played games in the largest volumes. Meanwhile, to assume 5 to 10 million of additional sales only sounds like a viable number because one is comparing it to total sales of 80M+, not the sales of 20M-25M or so that were made in the first 2 years. That would be assuming 25-50% of ALL 360 owners bought a second console during, or shortly after that period. The very highest estimates of the very earliest consoles suggested a possible failure rate close to 50%, whereas most estimates were down closer to 25%. Unless 100% of those turned into second sales, and absolutely noone took advantage of the over $1 Billion microsoft dedicated to replacement consoles, the number must be substantially below 5 million.