Pineapple said:
Removing bundles doesn't actually change a ton. I presume you're only talking about official bundles, and not store bundles (removing store bundles would be relatively stupid, and also impossible to account for). Anyway, removing bundles doesn't change up the list much. People are probably thinking mostly about the major Nintendo games for that, but that wouldn't be all that different. Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports Resort, Wii Play, Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus are all either not bundled or would easily have made 20 million even if not bundled. I'm not certain about New Super Mario Bros Wii. Unless I'm mistaken, it was first bundled when the red Wii came around (although I'm not sure about that), which was about a year after its launch. At this point, NSMB Wii had sold 16 million. It has since sold 9 more million, and we can't know how much of that is bundled. Still, it would most likely have been at around 20 million even if not bundled. In the 19-21 million range. Considering that it's still selling a bit, it would probably have sold more than 20 million eventually even if it hadn't by now. And while nearly all of Wii Sports' sales were bundled, it is the game this generation. It's what made the Wii craze, and largely what decided the winner this generation. If you exclude all bundles, this one falls of the list, but I think removing it is just silly. It is - unbunbled - the 6th best selling console game of all time in Japan, and that's the region it made the smallest impact. In other words, removing bundles drops between 0 and 2 of Nintendo's 20 million sellers depending on how you do it. It doesn't change the 10 million sellers at all, as far as I can tell. The changes on the Ps3 are negligible, and on the X360 you might bump Kinect off the 10 millioner, but I'm not even sure about that. It's sold 17 million, and a very large portion of that time it largely outsold the X360, which means it's not mainly due to bundles. I think that removing bundles causes bigger issues than it clarifies things, because little changes, and you end up saying the most important game of the generation sold 3.77 million.
On the Mario Kart point, I'm not sure the plastic bundle changed a lot. Mario Kart DS has no plastic wheel, and it sold well over 20 million, as is Mario Kart 7 looking to as well. |
I know it doesn't change much.
A few things to note however:
- Wii Play sold so much because of the basically free Wii Remote that came with it. I very much doubt that it would've hit 20m without the remote.
- Not too sure about Resort either, but I didn't check when the bundling started, but AFAIK it was included in every Wii SKU for at least the last year (correct me if I'm wrong).
- I didn't remove the Wii Sports bundles from my calculations, but I used about the same ratio as it did in Japan. I mean you can see from other releases, that it's about right. Halo 3 hit 10m when the 360 hit 30m. MK Wii did about one third of the current Wii userbase. Kinect Sports (which was the best game at the Kinect launch) had a 33% ratio and now still 26%, so I'd say potential sales of Wii Sports should realistically be between 24m(25%) and 32m(33%). Remember that there is little reason to buy it when Resort came out.
- I've been looking at some charts from Spain (among others) in the past and Mario Kart Wii was the only Wii game in the top 25. Needless to say that Spain and some other countries are dominated by pirates, but since Mario Kart comes with something physical attached to it, there is more reason to buy the original. So at least in Europe and in the "Rest of the World" region it sold a few millions more than if Nintendo hadn't bundled the wheel with it.