Well I'm not removing Wii Sports sales in NA completely but instead applying the attach rate of the game in Japan. To do the equivalent for 360 and PS3 you'd need an idea of the attach rate of the games if they were selling seperate from the console. We could do this by looking at historical data but it would be a lot of work to end up  with, I suspect, reasonably similiar results. 

I think the important thing we can take from thread and it's numbers is that a gamer's buying rate is determined more by which part of the world he/she lives in rather than what console he/she owns. Quite interesting I think. It also puts to bed the myth that Wii owners only buy the console for Wii Sports.  

Agreed. If Wii wasn't restricted by supply and it was selling several million a week then maybe the results would be notably scewed but as N are resticting sales to merely very good I don't think it impacts the comparison in a meaningful way.

I think devs have a look at how similar games are doing. The biggest wii problem is not that not enough games are bought but that nintendo accounts for 90% ( invented the number)of software sales for the wii

3rd parties can't complain when they release shit and it sells accordingly. These numbers prove Wii owners are as willing to part with their cash as any, it just so happens that N is the only company selling quality product.

 The Bodhesatva said it better than me. I'm not complaining or anything. My feeble attempt at conversation was to point out that this analysis will tend to favor the system with growing/accelerating sales (which I failed to do, sorry). I absolutely agree that this breakdown of the numbers is a valid way of way of looking at sales trends for a period that includes recency as a factor to reckon with. It's also a point of departure that invites further rumination.

Yeah, I got it after Bod explained further, apologies if I came across a little abruptly. I do think that using this process will scew the results a little but not enough to invalidate them. At the very least they show that all consoles are in the same ballpark software-wise in the 2 territories explored.

Wow i can't believe you went through the work on that. Nice job. Seems like all three systems are basically the same per month. A hysterical but great outcome.

hmmm...
I don't know about you guys, but I'd like my games whole.

Bod is right: New system launches this month: attach rate >= 1 (especially with Wii....)

About this favoring the best selling system, it also favors the system with most (cheap) games, since people more propably buy the system seller and 1 or 2 budget priced titles to go with the system, rather than 2-3 full priced games. And the most people who buy a lot of games with the system, are usually the early adopters, not so much the people who bought their consoles 6 months after the launch. Well, Bod works at retail, so he propably knows how this works better than i.

@Biggerboat: If you have any use for the info. From starter pack release in Europe, to the 40GB release, every PS3 sold in Europe was bundled with 2 games. They still seem have some starter packs left, although they start to be finally sold out. So, if we would have the number of "shipped" starter packs, we could have somekind of sales for bundled games. But since we don't have software numbers from Europe in that time period, i guess it was pretty useless information.