I once asked a man what a "core gamer" was, and he gave me this definition.

"One who has a genuine interest in video games and who buys video games on a relatively constant basis."

This seems like a pretty good definition to me, so let's use this one. We cannot effectively measure which console has more gamers with a "genuine interest in video games", so we can disregard that. However, we can measure which console has more gamers who "buy video games on a relatively constant basis".

We can measure this using attach ratio, which is the ratio between software sold and hardware sold. It tells us the average number of games each consumer buys. Of course, the 360 has the higher attach ratio (which most of you already know). This means 360 gamers generally purchase more games than PS3 gamers.

Looking at the facts, does this mean the 360 has more core gamers, contrary to popular belief? Maybe you don't think attach ratio is an effectively way to measure a core gamer? If so, why not?

it possibly has a higher % due to launching earlier

The Wii has a big attach ratio too lolz.

Interesting thought.  Having a year without competition couldn't have hurt.

Anyone have attach ratio by year? So we can compare growth? The PS3 having Day One digital for new releases will probably throw that number off somewhat. Wish we had those numbers.

The problem with using a figure like lifetime attach ratio is that it doesn't take time into consideration. I would love to see statistics that showed a yearly attach ratio (a measure of how much hardware and software a particular platform did in a particular year). In general, I agree with the definition that a core gamer is an individual who buys and plays video games on a regular basis, but I don't think you can easily deduce whether a platform has more core gamers solely on attach rate.

Edit: Pokoko beat me to it

Well some games on the PS3 outsold their X360 counterparts.

The 360 definitely has had the higher attach rates from early on in its life cycle where it received the better ports of multiplatform games. That carried on through a good part of this generation until devs finally got the hang of Cell and made MP games pretty much identical in quality on both platforms. But that initial difference in platforms did cause more people to deviate away from PS3 and towards 360.

The 360 was both statistically and in perception the "core gamer" box until about 3 years ago where M$ released the Kinect and moved towards the casual audience. The PS3's initial mistakes let it capitalise for the rest of the generation and build the idea that 3rd party software is better on the 360. Hence the higher attach rates. I think that may have changed somewhat now when PS3 MP games are just as good, but the higher attach rate still remains. Plus a year with no competition should have allowed it to sell quite a bit of software.