Now people are going to think I'm insane suggesting that 10-million VC sales is an embarrasment so just wait and listen to my logic.

Currently according to VGChartz their are 20-million Wii's in the hands of gamers accross the globe. Considering that , that means about half of that number are sold downloads. In the best case scenario you have an attach rate of 50%!

Now 50% is a drasticly innaccurate way to look at sales. Considering each download card purchased can be used for up to four downloads. That alone cuts the number of players downloading titles even lower to as low as 25% of the total 10-million are actually gamers who are downloading titles. So your talking at best 2.5 million gamers buying online games.

Now we get even further worse I myself have spent almost 200$ on games. I know many other gamers have purchased multiple cards. My friend has purchased three and used them all already. So what am I meaning now the number of gamers buying online games shrins even further.

So these numbers show that less then 2.5-million gamers downloading Virtual Console games. The number is more likely under a million because hard core gamers like myself buy dozens of cards my memory is already used up on my Wii from Virtual Console games.

So should Nintendo be proud that they sold 10-million online games or should they be embarrased?

Source 

where did you pull that 10 million number from?

I know I went all over with that post but point is, how many gamers are actually buying VC games. Now that number is drastically less then the amount of consoles sold.  Less then a quarter of those who buy the Wii are downloading games online.

 Less then a quarter is not something to be proud of!

Are you sure less than a quarter is bad?

Who the heck said Nintendo needed to sell more? The service is there, it's not costing Nintendo much, in fact, Nintendo is making plenty I'm sure.

Not everyone wants to play classic games...nobody ever expected every Wii gamer to buy VC games.

You could point out the number of Xbox Live downloads vs. the total userbase as well, and it's not a huge percentage.  It's probably bigger than the Wii's VC, but heck, the 360 is geared to work on XBL. 

Cost to set up service and provide games: say one million dollars
Revenue from service: 10m x $5 (minimum) = $50m

Profit: Over 5000%; at least 49 million dollars

Was it worth it to set up service: Yes

End of debate.

What percentage of XBox 360 or PS3 owners do you think have downloaded XBox Live Arcade or PSN games?

Realistically, 5% to 10% of gamers will be willing to pay for a downloadable game and they will only download games they're interested in ...

You realise only 40% of Wii owners even have an internet connection to download from (compared to I think 50-60% of 360 owners)

then consider not everyone of those 40% will want to buy old games again at all, and thus will have none (it is quite possible to have bought a lot of Wii games instead of buying VC)

I don't understand how the attach ratio of VC games is an important statistic at all.

And yes, as people have stated the XBL number is probably not much better.... I believe the last time I heard a number was 23 million downloads (on a 10 million base at the time)... but considering that it includes free downloads and demos and whatever else I would guess the number of games paid for was less than 10 million at the time, which is double what the Wii had (10 million on a 20 mil base) but then you have to consider that more 360 owners are connected to the internet, and that many XBL downloads are cheaper i think, and that XBL games are at least half new games, wheras Wiiware has not been released yet.

i think its poor. i expected sales of 12 million buy now, prehaps if they weren't overpriced, memory wasn't a limiting factor and europe and australia didnt get screwed over titles then it would be better

the question that has to be answered before deciding if it's bad or not is now many of them are online, also can you please justify where you get less than a quarter from.

10M downloads came from 20M Wii consoles - thats 1 download for every 2 sold, assuming that each of these will download 1 game this year & whilst demands outstripped supply then roughly (1.8M sold per month / 2) potentially 900K extra downloads at some time this year will be added each month.

If this rate is carried over into the Wiiware channel then i'm sure Nintendo will be fairly happy with the start it makes.

I'd say it's more the lack of compelling reason to connect most Wii's to the internet, that and the lack of memory on the Wii hinders a lot of hardcore VC purchasers like myself from grabbing more. The service works great other then the kinks I mentioned. Once the Wiiware games start coming out and Nintendo fixes their online plans things should hopefully roll along. Oh ya... the most important thing is STORAGE! Give us a better way to store these games!