Even there you are assuming that these "newer gamers" who are just now buying Wii systems aren't buying more than one game and need to be offset by others.  One person I know purchased a staggering 7 games to go with his Wii right from the start.  Now it would be silly to assume that he represents a large portion of new buyers' habits, but it would be the same to assume that someone who buys a Wii with no games does the same.  About the only assumption that is even remotely safe is that each Wii owner will have at least one game for their system and I'm sure there is even an exception to that somewhere... (people who buy it for gadget testing).

Once again, with only an average and not a distribution, we don't really know. 

Your final "proof" is maybe even less accurate than you may realize.  After a year, the Wii's warrantee runs out.  At that point, there may be people who actually buy new Wiis rather than pay Nintendo's repair cost further skewing the attach ratio.  I'm sure the PS2 was a victim of this many times over.

@WoW: I believe what HS tried to say, was that looking at the distribution is irrelevant, if all the consoles have been measured by the same methods. Since we don't have any kind of reliable information about distribution, we can only look at the attach rates.

And another important thing that HS brought up, was Nintendos aim in expanding the audience. It's rather irrelevant if they manage to sell just the console and Wii Fit, if that's everything they can sell to this audience. This is where Sony failed with Singstar and Eyetoy, there wasn't much about nothing for the audience Sony tapped with the titles, while Nintendo wants to upstream them to play the core titles, like Mario Kart.

And to add something myself, since Nintendo knows that profit originates from software (if Iwata is to believe), they also want the "secondary gamer" to play games. If we assume that traditionally console have been bought for one person per household, tapping the "secondary gamer" market, would theoretically double the software sales potential with the same amount of consoles.

You guys do know that WoW is just making you guys work through an intellectual exercise as he plays Devil's Advocate to have a bit of fun? While WoW does not particularly like Wii Fit, he is just trying to get you guys to define for yourself why you believe what you believe.

The problem is that WoW is so good at playing Devil's Advocate that everyone falls for it... XD

Does anyone know the soft attach rate for the PS2 off hand?

Regardless of what it is, it undoubtedly dropped over time as the mass market consumer gradually became its largest demographic.

At this point for the Wii, people could only venture to guess what percentage of the consumer base falls into the mass market demographic. If I had to throw a number into the air, it would be anywhere between 25-50% of the overall market.

Whatever that number is, they are the consumers most likely to never buy more than 5 titles total over the lifetime of the console.

It's too early to be claiming any significant portion of Wii sales are a result of "replacement" (as in cheaper/easier to buy the same console twice than repair it). Based upon current rates of failure, it seems unlikely that Wii reliability will ever be a significant issue in driving repeat sales unless QC takes a big nose dive if Nintendo ramps up production too fast by lowering standards (very unlikely).

As it stands currently, the soft attach rate for the Wii is extremely respectable, even with the significant portion of consumers who buy well under the average.

As for Wii Fit, and it's not the first time I've said this, usage will have a built in attrition rate of use, like most exercise equipment (and most games). After 6 months of ownership, I would expect well under 10% usage for all consumers. Well under 50% even after 3 months.

But the key difference is that common perception for many consumers, is that the product is something that they will be using, or plan on using for a longer period of time (in the interest of weight loss, fitness, whatever) than reality. Not too many buy Wii Fit with the idea in mind that they read about it/heard about it, wanted to give it a try and then either decided it was fun, or not useful, only to stop using it a week or two later.

Personally, I accumulated over 30 hours of Wii Fit credits in about two months, and have stopped using it. I just did a Wii Fit test after reading this thread and it had been ten days since my last test. This is not to say it's going into the closet, since I can still use it for light work outs periodically, but I already have a biometric scale, so there's no need for a daily Fit Test.

It's still a good product, although not the industry revolution some made it out to be. The main reason I still remain optimistic about it is for future applications of the Balance Board, otherwise, it wouldn't make a difference if I flipped it on Ebay, or stored it in the closet.

@luinil: I think everyone knows what WoW is doing. It's just that it's much more fun to discuss with people who knows their business and knows how to back their claims up. Besides, if you don't like intellectual exercises, you're not going to run into the arguments.
Besides, after WoW gets cornered, he suddenly "sees the light" and admits he was wrong.

Lol, so true. I just wanted to point this out because it seems that everyone's sarcasm detector is defective these days (see this). I guess I did the obvious... >_<

I don't know.  You can say X average is bad, but it's okay because Y and Z averages are bad however that misses a single factor.  X's average is not made up of the same people as Y and Z.  We can't treat the Wii's userbase as we would the PS360's because the people in it are not the same.  Due to the presence of so many "new" types of gamers in the Wii's region, I don't think it's fair to treat it the same.  I also think it would be fairly hypocritical to focus on how Nintendo is expanding the market with its system and then ignore that factor in the discussion.

Also, you say Nintendo is expanding their audience even if they just sell Wii Fit and their Wii but isn't that all they're doing.  In this case, I'd say that "Expanding the audience" is different from "Growing the industry."  If someone buys a Wii and never buys another game, Nintendo has made a sale and that may count as them "expanding their audience" but the industry's size has not changed.  If that person has a bad experience, the industry's market cap has actually just shrunk.

The Secondary gamer is huge in the Nintendo strategy.  A lot of titles so far in the Wii line have been very group/party friendly.  Wii Sports, Warioware, and more work great to entertain groups of people.

@Luin/bdbdbd

Oh shush you two. Stop ruining my fun. ^_^

I said "the vast majority of them probably only own one game" and I should be clear in saying I meant beyond what the console itself includes.  If you want to call this an assumption then I think we should also question the assumption that these people are prone to purchase fewer games as that is certainly a much larger assumption, yet apparently we need to disprove this rather than prove it.  It is interesting to note that the assumption that these newer gamers purchase fewer games actually strengthens the position that new hardware purchasers are less likely to have purchased more games yet, in effect the position itself strengthens the argument against it.

Nobody is debating that a point for point look at the distribution would be ideal, but as its not possible with our data we have to accept what we can look at.  What we can look at is attach ratio, and it can still give a very clear picture of the situation.

I'm really not sure if I should take this last argument too seriously.  The failure/replacement rate on the PS2 was fairly substantial by most accounts (I myself am on my 3rd PS2 and have a 320GB hard drive with all of my games loaded on it so I don't have to worry about it not reading discs) where the Wii is reportedly under 1%.  Systems like the 360 and the PS2 had common problems that are identified with their failures (RRoD and laser failures respectively), and to my knowledge the only problem the Wii has experienced was the Fan not turning on properly in WC24 mode which was alleviated by a patch. Of course there is also the point that even the folks who do have problems are more likely to get repairs due to the continued shortages. In short this is a relatively insignificant group of people...of which an unknown percentage of them might skew the numbers. I'm not seeing how this is really worth considering.

You do not understand.  The fact that there are people who have bought fewer games is indeed a fact.  As soon as you have one person with more games than the average games per console ratio, it means that there's someone out there with fewer.   In my first post about this subject, I said based on my own collection that I know there are at least 2 people out there with few games (as I have at least 3 times the average games/wii ratio).  None of this is assumption, it's mathetmatically provable fact.

I also don't care if you take that last argument seriously or not.  Last week one of my friends had his Wii die on him in the middle of playing SSBB.  No warning, no message, just dead.  The Wii failure rate is indeed a factor and will only continue to grow as such as time passes (more Wiis in the market + longer time = more failures).  It may never reach RRoD levels, but you can't simply ignore it either.