"UPDATE: Having read our story, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter decided to give us his take in an email: "Year-to-date (which I think is more relevant than lifetime), third parties have sold 13.4 million units of software for the Wii and 16.5 million units for the 360. That's NPD, and U.S. only. My guess is that the numbers are much closer to the same if we include Europe, and much higher for Wii if we go worldwide.""

Love how Pachter just e-mails GameDaily.biz when he reads their articles. He doesn't even wait for them to contact him...

But it's a great fact he brings up. With 360 only ahead of Wii by 3.1M units, or 19%, for the first half of the year, when it had an install base advantage and GTAIV (and Wii had Fit, Brawl and Kart), it means Wii is probably in shape to sell as much or more 3rd party software for the whole of the year than 360, even in 360's strong market.

MS's spin focuses on 2006 and 2007 sales and Nintendo is trying to demonstrate future trends, but that YTD figure is "right now."

Who said anything was more accurate? *You* said there were no raw numbers for Nintendo's chart when there clearly was, and therefore *you* said Microsoft's numbers were better.

All *I* said was that Pachter actually gives the best neutral analysis, but I bet you didn't read that, either?  Neither party is "lying", that's a stupid thing to say quite frankly.

You only have 40 posts and already your attitude is close to getting you banned.

nintendo do not have nothing to prove this gen, they are the leading company

at the moment lol

So why do they need to lie for, i think it is a little stupid to be honest and shows how desperate they are for third party support

What metrics do you propose that are more important than "games sold over time"?

Why don't we look at "games sold this year."  Even with GTA 4 for the Xbox 360 and 3 huge first party Wii releases (vs zero for the 360) we see that the Wii is only a few million units behind the 360 right now.  That means the Wii might outsell the 360 third party software this year in the US.

If you include Europe and Japan, the results won't even be close.  The Wii certainly sold more third party software this year than the 360.

Next year, it's all but certain that the Wii will crush the 360 in every single region, including America, and sell more third party software everywhere.

Microsoft's spin is always, "we brought in more revenue (which is irrelevant) since launch, and therefore we're doing better."  That is misleading to the point of deception: how they did since launch doesn't define how they're doing today.  They don't want comparisons against the PS3 over relatively short terms (ie: Year to Date) and they sure as hell don't want comparisons against the Wii Year to Date.

I have a 360.  I don't hate Microsoft.  They're just not doing very well.

LOL you must have some comprehension problems.Even by Nintendo numbers the PS3 has moved some 2/3 of the Wii third party software ..and full price games at that unlike the wii and its cheapo shovelware.That ,with a way smaller userbase ,is not a proof of the PS3 doing much worse ,just the contrary.Think about it.

As for MS numbers ,they also favour the PS3 against the Wii.More average third party games sold by release with a way smaller userbase.Thats the true state of things.

Pachter has a hatred of misinformation which is commendable - its the reason he wrote to Gamedaily I'm sure.

The way to look at the YTD 3rd party software is like so:

Jan 1 2008 - 360 led Wii by ~1.75m in the USA according to NPD

July 1 2008 - Wii led 360 by ~.5m in the USA according to NPD

Split the difference: On avg, 360 was ahead by ~.61m in 2008 through June 30. So with the same attach rate, it would be higher than Wii. Throw in DMC4, GTAIV, and the other big 3rd party games and realize that Wii had none of the games traditionally considered blockbusters and you come away with the sense that Wii is going to be a great platform for alot of third party games because the sales are comparable despite fewer blockbusters. Wii's top third party games for this period were probably Boom Blox, GH: Aerosmith, Rockband, and Lego Indiana Jones. Its somewhat amazing that its even close since GTA alone could be the difference of 16m vs. 13m

Everyone's going to spin information to their advantage really , I agree with whoever said let's wait til the end of the gen for an accurate analysis.

Nintendo not spinning?  BS.

The graph Nintendo's VP pointed to first http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/nintendo-thirdparty-games-not-selling-on-wii-is-a-false-assumption/?biz=1, not the one used later by gamedaily itself as quoted by the source, absolutely is spin.

"We recently posted a story discussing the state of third-party software sales on Wii, which included a chart from Nintendo that inconveniently also lumped in first-party sales." (Quoted from the source's quote from Gamedaily -- sorry I don't know how to use multiple quotes on this site.)

Graphing 1st party + 3rd party sales while discussing 3rd party sales exclusively misleads the reader by throwing in superfluous, highly favorable information that is not relevant in any manner.

Nintendo might not have lied, but it did choose to display an irrelevant chart that portrays them as having a huge lead in place of the relevant chart where it has a much smaller lead.  Such behaviour defintely exudes questionable honesty, and certainly qualifies to be called spinning.

That's not spin.  That's an, "Oops, NPD sent us the wrong chart."    Notice later on the actual requested chart was presented and guess what....it coincided with exactly what Nintendo said to begin with.

Why is this so hard for you guys to understand?   It's really makeing some of you look logically challenged or intentionally disregarding fact for your own bias.

Gamedaily, never said anything about a mistake being made with the chart used, only that Nintendo will use another one at a later time.  If a mistake however, was made, I apologize and have been mistaken (though I'd say gamedaily had mislead me). 

However, if no mistake was made, then Nintendo made an argument with its only purpoted piece of evidence being a chart whose relevance was wholly ruined with irrelevant information (you can't even retrieve the relevant information from it alone).  In argumentation and logic, being right isn't enough (I'm not saying they don't have more 3rd party sales), you have to be right for the reasons you present, and having presented faulty evidence as its sole usable evidence in the case, Nintendo's attempt to set the "record straight" fails as an argument.  The whole press release in the case that there was no mistake, is spin because it never actually proves what it says, and makes it appear that Nintendo actually has a huge lead whereas whatever lead or loss it actually has is indecipherable from the information used in its argument.