The Gamecube sold 83m from million sellers, so a total of 100M software for it seems fair. I'll be working with that number.

The virtual console total sales are (top 20 weekly):

Americas: 6309K

Others: 2623K

Total without Japan: 8932K

But this number is obviously low overall, as Nintendo did in February say they had sold 10M virtual console (http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/06/nintendo-sells-10m-virtual-console-games-still-emphasizes-retai/)

The sales for the last 3 months (in Americas) are at around 750-1000K (not certain, as the last ones are a bit different than the original) http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=1355 is the first channel surfing.

So if we say that at the 10M time, there was around 5M in Americas, we can claim that a little over 50% is Americas, which means that close to 50% was Others + Japan.

So, if we say that there is a 50/50 split with America/Everything else still, and that the sales were equal monthly in February - July as from July - October, we can say that there has right now been sold about 15-16M virtual console games.

We can also claim that the Virtual console is tracking at a little over 12M sales a year (assuming there's a christmas boost for downloadables too), and that this number is likely to increase.

So, I see the Virtual console sales to be somewhere around (although this is far fetched, I really have little clue)

2006+2007+ Jan 08 = 10M

08, save for Jan = 10-12M

09 = 15-20M

'10 =  ~ 20M

'11 = ~ 20M

'12 and out = needs to be ~ 20M to beat Gamecube.

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I just thought this was a bit interesting. Please also note that my net went down, so mostly everything was deleted when I tried to post it. Thus, some might be a bit un-readable in the re-write.

If anything is unclear, just ask.

Total SW number for Gamecube is 208 million.

It's written in a sticked thread in the sale forum about Nintendo consoles LTD HW/SW number.

Then this thread is pretty pointless then.

yes the Virtual Console may one day outsell the Gamecube in SW, but the VC has NES,SNES,N64,MS,GEN,TG-16,TG-CD and NEO-GEO games to pick from, and their already made, all thats left is too upload them to Wii, and they also cost a fraction of the price that new Gamecube games used to go for, so I dont see this as a valid compairason.

why would you think million sellers alone made up 83% of total gamecube sales? That would be horrible.

However, even it VC does reach the 200m+ mark it really isnt' the same as the average GC game probably cost around $40 or so and the VC games average is probably around $7. Pretty big difference.

and maybe the C-64 eventually.  i think it's fair to through in the plays-on-wii sales as well since they are CG games.  regardless of the LTD numbers i think it's fair to say nintendo is going to make a ridiculus amount of money selling old games.

There are some details that seem to have been left out of you analysis. First the Virtual Console does not suffer from Used game sales. Secondly, the Virtual Console has a larger User base and more third party support than the Gamecube. Since your initial analysis was wrong my point is moot.

Indeed - remember all those "Gamecube has a great attach rate" comments? It's b/c the ~20mil GC owners bought ~200mil software.

Still, the VC sales are interesting. I'm curious how it'll be doing when the install base grows faster.