@ TWRoO

No, the 360 attach ratio is worldwide. The figures add up well:



The only thing you need to keep in mind is headstarts for the various markets, else you may think the average XBox 360 owner buys more games per month of console ownership than PS3 owners do. Which is clearly not the case.

MikeB said: @ TWRoO No, the 360 attach ratio is worldwide. The figures add up well: The only thing you need to keep in mind is headstarts for the various markets, else you may think the average XBox 360 owner buys more games per month of console ownership than PS3 owners do. Which is clearly not the case.

And where did that image get it's data from? (if you give me a link I can try check it for you if you haven't already... but if it's originally from fiscal reports then I already know MS have only so far given out NPD figures... which by the way don't include any bundles such as the double game bundles MS gives out each Christmas period)

It is also a different figure from the ones you were using from The Source.... added up together the ratio of games to consoles from The Source's post was 8.35

@ TWRoO

The attach rate can be read here:
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/download/FY10/Q3-FY10Slides.ppt

Do the math!

What do you worry about specifically, you think the average attach rate may be much higher in the rest of the world compared to the United States?

They did not state those are NPD figures, nor are they using other trackers for those sales. However they know how many games were sold to retail worldwide as they receive a portion of the revenue from the publishers (of relevance to shareholders).

Microsoft regularly reports attach rates, they do this as they know their headstart on the market distorts the figures in comparison to later launched consoles and thus IMO they can hype this and rely on fanboys lacking the ability to perform simple match to spread their gospel. With the constant updates of attach rates combined with shipped units, it's rather simple though to get the figures.

The above presented math is not advanced at all and is rather simple to understand...

MikeB said: @ TWRoO The attach rate can be read here: http://www.microsoft.com/msft/download/FY10/Q3-FY10Slides.ppt Do the math! What do you worry about specifically, you think the average attach rate may be much higher in the rest of the world compared to the United States? They did not state those are NPD figures, nor are they using other trackers for those sales. However they know how many games were sold to retail worldwide as they receive a portion of the revenue from the publishers (of relevance to shareholders). Microsoft regularly reports attach rates, they do this as they know their headstart on the market distorts the figures in comparison to later launched consoles and thus IMO they can hype this and rely on fanboys lacking the ability to perform simple match to spread their gospel. With the constant updates of attach rates combined with shipped units, it's rather simple though to get the figures. The above presented math is not advanced at all and is rather simple to understand...

Dude...w/e...your info is flawed.

 

Spin things how ever you want..but your clearly biased...more so with your history here on vg.

 

Regardless of what you think...ATM 360 has better ratio.  And thats not changing anytime soon.

 

 

@ DarkisWR

Of course, the XBox 360 has a higher attach ratio, the console had a 1 year headstart in the US and Japan, a 1 year and 4 months headstart for PAL regions (2 additional holiday seasons!) and much more so for other regions... However today this does not matter anymore as all consoles have been on the market for a while. (BTW the Wii also had a headstart in Europe/PAL regions, one extra holiday season and that also distorts comparisons, but to a much lesser extend)

IMO it's so ridiculously simple to understand.

How do attach ratios work? Look at the PS2 attach ratio. Imagine Sony would stop selling the PS2 today, then the attach ratio will increase as the PS2 still sells software.

However the PS2 still sells very well, even beating the XBox 360 last quarter. Game sales are low due in part to piracy but probably way more relevant a very healthy 2nd hand market (I think the PS3 will likely get an even more lively 2nd hand market at some point due in part of the scratch resistance of Blu-Ray disc). So the attach rate can drop slightly.

Attach rates also drops relatively when you sell a lot of hardware in a short period of time as the new users didn't have enough time to buy enough games for their console.

Why do attach rates normally increase over time? Let's say your attach ratio is 8, new users normally don't buy 8 games the day they buy a console, however the ratio would normally still increase as the installed base will buy games as well.

Let's say the average console owner only buys 2 game per year. After 5 years the specific attach ratio for that sole console would be 10. (5 * 2 makes 10) There's a direct correlation with time.

VGChartz' and my info aren't flawed in this regard at all. Specify in what way you think they would be flawed?

TWRoO is right, 8.8 ratio is for NPD only. Overall 360 ratio is estimated by Source to be 8.35, which is alot closer to PS3 8.1.

@ shanbcn

Microsoft can't combine their worldwide shipment data in fiscal reports with regional software attach ratios (for example: "Worldwide shipped this amount of hardware worldwide and our attach ratio is 10 games per console [in Liechtenstein ]"), that would be severely misleading its shareholders.

I don't think they are lying in fiscal reports. In PR it's clear they do that a lot, but in fiscal reports is very risky and there's no need to do such things (Microsoft is a wealthy and healthy company). Also the figures wouldn't add up anymore.

MikeB said: @ slowmo I think you and others are being childish, XBox fans here destroyed a lot of good discussions, be that technical or sales discussions. the only valid comparison is total sales LTD With the 1 year headstart for the XBox 360 in Japan and the US and a 1 year and 4 months headstart in PAL regions (2 extra holidays seasons in the past for the XBox 360) and more in other parts of the world that would a distorted picture. What matters to software companies is not a headstart a platform in a distant past had on the market but how much software they can expect to sell now on a platform and the data clearly shows the PS3 has siginificantly beaten the XBox 360 on software sales last year despite 4.47 million fewer units on the market. Even in the XBox 360's best year of software sales PS3 software relatively outsold the XBox 360 despite a very large install base gap. Yet total sales were virtually identical. At the end of this fiscal year the PS3 install base is anticipated to have overtaken the XBox 360's total install base, so if you were a software company and you would start developing a software project today (which is done at the end of this fiscal year), considering all the data, which platform would be more interesting to you? (try to reason as a businessman when answering this question)

 

Think what you like, your the one calling people out when YOU were wrong. 

If I was a business man I would realise that the biggest market in the world for gaming is the US and the 360 dominates the PS3 in sales over there so I'd definately concentrate on the 360.  Considering all the data after this xmas when the PS3 has been beaten out in sales will you be calling for development to be stopped on it then MikeB?

You've made enough claims about the 360's reliability rate MikeB, I'd argue that there are actually potentially already less 360's out there than PS3's if you want to play the lets spin some bullshit figures game.  You should try practicing your own advice sometime and stop thinking like a fan.

@ slowmo

What reliability rate claims? I just stated at a time when Microsoft claimed in PR "well within industry standards" the failure rates were in reality pretty extreme.

In reply to lawsuits Microsoft finally admitted massive failures well beyond industry standards to its shareholders. So IMO any criticism I got from fanboys at the time does not reflect badly on me but on the fanboys (there was overwhelming evidence I linked to to back up my claims, which ended up proven to be correct officially).

MikeB said: @ shanbcn Microsoft can't combine their worldwide shipment data in fiscal reports with regional software attach ratios (for example: "Worldwide shipped this amount of hardware worldwide and our attach ratio is 10 games per console [in Liechtenstein ]"), that would be severely misleading its shareholders. I don't think they are lying in fiscal reports. In PR it's clear they do that a lot, but in fiscal reports is very risky and there's no need to do such things (Microsoft is a wealthy and healthy company). Also the figures wouldn't add up anymore.

I couldn't open the link for some reason (something to do with text file not supported), however I have viewed the MS slides from previous fiscal reports.

(Edit... apparently my download failed, which is why I can't read them, and it isn't letting me download them again)

If you check some of the historic ones, you should notice about 4-6 quarterlies back they used to have an asterix on the attach ratio they gave on the slides, with a note at the bottom saying it was from NPD data. I can't understand why they took that off, but the figures are almost certainly still NPD because they were so similar. (I can't recall exact figures, but in each set of slides it was going up 6.5-7.0-7.3-or something, up to about 8.1 I think, then they stopped putting "from NPD" at the bottom but the figures were pretty much the same, carrying on with 8.3-8.4 and now 8.8)

 

It is NPD attach ratio, it is a sales attach ratio, it is lower than what the shipment ratio will be. (and lower than what the purchased ratio will be as NPD doesn't inclue the official bundles)

 

I think the point of your original post may have been that developers should be able to focus on PS3 games now more than X360 as PS3 is about reaching it's peak, wheras X360 is past it, on that I would agree, the PS3 will likely see more software sales on a monthly basis from now on, with perhaps next Christmas the X360 catching up a bit though as it seems to see better Christmas boosts than PS3.

The X360 shipment attach ratio is higher than the PS3 by more than what you thought, but as I said, attach ratio is biased by the headstart the X360 had as well as by different sales patterns (ie even if they had launched at the same time, if X360 had better hardware sales early on and PS3 had better now by an equal amount, the X360 ratio would naturally be higher even if the owners bought the same number of games per month)

If I remember correctly, The Source actually made a thread about the attach rate (games per system per month, or per week) And all three consoles were so similar it made little difference (if it makes you happy i think PS3 was on top... something like 1.32 to 1.3 to 1.25 for Wii)