Dude, this is freaking NPD. America. USA. Not Europe.

Just checked Sinha and the numbers he reported for the PS2 are impossible. http://www.playstation.com/business.html

Go to Production Shipments of Playstation 2 under software. The system only shipped 477 million units of software in America at the end of the last fiscal year. The PS2 had only shipped around 41 million units of hardware then. Even if the PS2 had sold every single unit of software they shipped the attach rate would be a little over 12.

Edit: I feel I should clarify: The difference between PS2 hardware shipped and sold shouldn't be more than 1 million or so, but the difference between PS2 software shipped and sold can be huge. That attach rate is really impossible.

In-box bundled games are never counted. Those are put there during the manufacturing. In-store bundles do get counted however.

The reason wii sports is specified as not counted is because that's a copy from sonycowboy's post at neoGAF and it could have been him making that remark for whatever reasons (maybe forum related, there's been arguments there wether wiisports/wiiplay count or not as sold games), not npd.

This precisely correlates with the hypothesis I made in this post.

http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=12113

While the 360 IS dominating, its dominance is becoming less behemoth-like and more just like "a particularly good software moving console."

Over the last two months, attach ratios have increased at this rate:

PS3: .43
Wii: .42
360: .26

Which means Wii/PS3 software attach rate is increasing at a significantly faster clip than the 360's is. I expect software sales parity (not software ATTACH RATE parity) sometime in the middle of next year, when Wii has perhaps 10 percent more hardware than 360 does.  

Using the data from VGChartz -- which includes all bundled games, the following are the attach rates for each

Xbox 360 -- 6.85
PS3 -- 4.68
Wii -- 4.65

Now we know that the Wii has a 1:1 ratio of its bundle. What I cannot do is know how many of the 360 and PS3 games were bundle sales.

(Then again, since the Wii sells for more in NA and EU which has the Wii Sports included and less in Japan where you have to buy it separately, is this really a bundle or an excuse to make you buy a game with the system? -- In other words, Nintendo is making money off of this sale too.)

What this tells me is that the average game collection for a PS3 or Wii owner is about the same size -- meaning that Wii owners DO buy games. (Including Wii Sports -- see my comment about).

But that right now at least, the Xbox 360 owners are still the purchase champs due to their year-long head start.

Mike from Morgantown

Why, what is the DS tie ratio?

I don't think its important how many extra sales PS3 and 360 got from their bundles really. The Wii isn't going to have the best attach ratio ever. Its just not going to happen, but it does sell alot of software just based on the fact that it has a massive userbase that grows at an alarming rate.

I expected it to be worse really. I didn't think any of these people that are buying the Wii for Wiisports would buy other games. I expected grandma at the nursing home and Soccer Mom thats 40 years old but still, somehow mysteriously hot, to play Wii sports for a year then shelve the console and contribute nothing to the system. But we are being proven wrong by MP8 selling millions, freaking carnival games selling 300+k in 2 months and stuff like Warioware which has sold over 600k in the US alone, Rayman Raving rabbids has passed 500k and even cooking mama, a freaking straight ds to wii port is cresting 200k on the Wii version.

Those casuals are buying games, it could DEFINITELY be worse. In any case, so long as the Wii keeps selling, its all good. After all, Capcom sold 1m copies of RE:4 and 1.3m of Dead Rising. They don't get extra money just because DR had a better 360 attach rate. Whether you sell 500k on a system with a userbase of 1 million, or 500k on a system with a userbase of 2 million, the money you make looks and spends the same.

However if the casuals stop buying games, and they stop BEFORE the real games like Fragile, MH3 and Spore arrive for the actual GAMERS to buy, theres gonna be trouble in Nintenland.

I've seen it before, it's around 4.5-5, so its not even close to beating the 360. Although it IS the highest attach ratio for a handheld system ever, by a fairly sizable margin, I believe. 

@Xyrax

Watch out knocking the 40-year old gamer. I'll be 44 on Monday -- and have over 30 games for my Wii. 8*>

Seriously though, you make a valid point about the Wii's attach rate. Given some elements of its base, they are NOT going to to buy a lot of extra games.

Also, isn't there a law that there is an inverse relationship between the number of consoles sold and the eventual attach rate?

Mike from Morgantown