When it comes down to it we as gamers are interested in console sales for 1 major reason, 3rd party support. The more hardware moved the better the chances that 3rd party software will sell, in turn meaning increased future 3rd party support. So how does 3rd party support over the top 2 consoles this gen so far compare?

Below I've compiled a list of the 15 best selling 3rd party games on Wii & 360 released since the Wii's launch, I've chosen this date so that a fair comprison can be made. I've deemed a 3rd party game to be any game which is not published by either Microoft or Nintendo.

Wii's best selling 3rd party games released since Nov 19th 2006, ie. launch.

1.Rayman Raving Rabbid     1.14m

2.Red Steel     1.03m

3.Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition     1.02m

4.Sonic and the Secret Rings     0.76m

5.Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07     0.74m

6.Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock     0.58m

7.Cooking Mama: Cook Off     0.53m

8.Trauma Center: Second Opinion     0.51m

9.Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors     0.49m

10.Madden NFL 07    0.41m

11.Spiderman: The Movie 3     0.39

12.MySims     0.36

13.Dragonball Z Sparking NEO    0.36m

14.Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz     0.35m

15.Happy Feet     0.34m

Total    9.01m

360's best selling 3rd party games released since Nov 19th 2006

1.Tom Clancy Rainbow Six: Vegas     1.98m

2.Guitar Hero II     1.7m

3.Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare     1.6m

4.Madden NFL 08     1.33m

5.Bioshock     1.31m

6.Assassins Creed     1.21m

7.Tom Clancy Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2     1.21m

8.Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock     1.1m

9.Pro Evolution Soccer 6     1.06m

10.Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy     0.73m

11.DiRT     0.68m

12.Spiderman: The Movie 3     0.65m

13.Pro Evolution Soccer 2008     0.62m

14.Half-Life 2: The Orange Box     0.61m

15.FIFA Soccer 08     0.61m

Total 16.35m 

I have to say that it is way closer than I would have guessed though I do accept that as a comparison it is not perfect. Due to the 19th Nov 06 cut-off quite a few high selling 360 titles were ommitted which released only a couple of weeks or in some cases days earlier and would have had good sales since Wii's launch. Unfortunately I could see no better way to make the comparison without losing more hours of my life than I was willing to part with so we'll just have to accept the limitations. 

Taking the totals we can see that the 360 titles outsell the Wii's by a ratio of 1.82:1. Even if we bump this ratio up to say 2.5 due to sales of pre Nov19'06' 360 game sales between Nov19'06' to present it is still a whole lot less ugly a situation for the Wii than I had anticipated for a couple of reasons. 1) the resources invested in 360 relative to Wii have been astronomical. I wouldn't be surprised if Assassins Creed and Bioshock alone cost more than the entirety of Wii's list combined. & 2) The Wii's userbase started from nada, zero, nothing whereas 360's software was selling to a base of roughly 6 million straight off the bat. I'd go so far as to say that dollar for dollar dev's have seen a significantly better return on their investments on Wii than it's competitor which imo is probably THE most meaningful statistic out there.

Another point of interest which the lists show us is what message Wii and 360 owners are sending devs in regards to preffered genres. Whilst 360 mainly centres around FPSs & Sports (10 out of the 15) Wii has a far more diverse line-up. Puzzle, FPS, Mini-game, Third-Person-Adventure, Sports, Fighter, Rythm & Sim all feature in the 15. In fact the 2 most similiar games in Wii's list would probably be Tiger & Madden or Sonic & Super Monkey Ball, ie. not similiar at all.

What does all this mean. Well imo it means that next year 360 owners will continue to receive the lion's share  of 3rd party resources but less so than '07' and of these titles the majority will be FPSs and Sports. As for the Wii, I think we can expect A LOT more support in terms of investment and crucially the number of quality games remembering that a good game on the platform is relatively tiny when compared to it's rival's. Even more importantly, for me at least, is that if dev's go by the above buying patterns the variety and diversity of the lineup will be unparallelled!

OK, that'll do. If you spot any mistakes let me know and I'll correct them.

Enjoy. 

Well. you are comparing 1st console to a 2nd year console. It would be better to compare 360's 1st year.

I was surprised at how close they were too. Especially as 3rd part games have been so much less good on the wii than 360 so far.

True story.

@super good point but other then that nice numbers

Closer that what I'd have expected as well, although I'd also appreciate a comparison between the first years of both consoles.

I don't think 3rd parties care about aligning launches and years of consoles, they're only interested in what's selling now! Any dev out there that is about to start a new project and wants to know which system to invest in will look at 07 data for both Wii and 360 as it's the most indicative of the current market.

amazing 3rd party software sales for the Wii so far.

And lets not count 1st party software :O)

Interesting read, but superchunk has a point!
I'm not too surprised at the lack of million sellers among 3rd party titles for the Wii yet, but some of the 360 titles have done better than I thought actually.

even though it is first vs. second I think wii is doing pretty good