Jumpin said:
No, the fallacy is the strawman argument you provided. Nowhere did I argue that New Super Mario Bros was a killer app, in fact, I stated the exact opposite. You fabricated an argument, said it was mine, and then made your attempts to defeat it. You made a straw man. A killer app is NOT a game that sells over 10 million; a killer app is a game that drives a substantial demand for hardware sales on its own - like how Wii Sports and Breath of the Wild did. Both consoles sold out until several million units had sold. With Switch, Breath of the Wild exceeded hardware sales numbers for a time. Neither Animal Crossing nor New Super Mario Bros 2 drove millions of sales; people bought those titles because they already had a 3DS. Otherwise, 3DS sales were at baseline the year both games were released, selling slightly less than 2011's and 2013's holidays. Factoring in the competition, 3DS in 2011 had much stiffer competition than 2012, since other handhelds sold significantly higher in 2011. If both New Super Mario Bros 2 AND New Leaf were killer apps, you would expect to see an unprecedented sales spike with 3DS being sold out for months; this didn't occur. Thus neither game was a killer app. Also, if it's still not obvious enough, look at the sales numbers of New Leaf - they are FAR below the sales of the 3DS. There is little correlation between 3DS sales numbers and New Leaf sales numbers; this indicates little/no relationship between new 3DS purchases and New Leaf. It was an evergreen title that sold moderately well at launch and continued to sell among the 3DS userbase. The ownership of 3DS drove the sales of New Leaf, not the other way around. The 10 million sales it eventually received was the result of years of moderately good sales. The game was not a killer app. |
Nope, New Leaf was a reason I bought my 3DS, gg no re! Hence the problem with your definition of killer app, we can't know exactly what each individual customer bought their system for. Just looking at short term hardware sales after a release is ignoring the scenarios where people buy systems in anticipation of games (like I did for New Leaf) or well after it's already released because any number of reasons.
To say Wii Sports/BotW sold systems completely on their own is a massive stretch. Well, to say a game that sold over 10 million and is in the top 10 best selling games on the system isn't a significant contributor to hardware sales is already a crazy stretch, but I digress. There are plenty of other games around Wii Sports/BotW and the hardware n advertising were also on point. Without those I highly doubt the Wii and Switch would have sold the same on a single game. This also goes for the 3DS baseline, I'd say it's not selling that much in spite of New Leaf, it's selling that much because of it. The baseline would surely be lower without it.
Using your logic with attach rates (which applies to most systems), I guess 3DS has no system sellers then? I don't think you're willing to go that far, so then what do you think are the 3DS' system sellers? Just Pokemon? Despite each game also having a huge sales difference compared to hardware numbers, unless you believe each version sold to completely different people, that there's no overlap whatsoever, but that would be silly! Once Zelda's attach rate falls to 15-20%, will you also say it's not a system seller anymore? lol no, the only conclusion is that there are multiple system sellers that do not have much overlap.
Imo the only real killer app is no one thing on it's own but a combination of everything: great games on a consistent schedule, great hardware and great marketing.
Last edited by Lonely_Dolphin - on 03 January 2018
