You've already provided the support for this implication, noname2200, with your OP.

If you don't want to think about it, or allow it to mix with your own ideas of why this data is as it is, that's your choice. I'm not on a crusade to dig up more evidence, sorry.

EA might die, but another gaming company as big will rise to take its place, it's natural selection, and when/if that happens the new company will aim for the top of the sales too...

No board of any first rate producer/developer company will seriously listen to a request to focus on games that sell less and cost less because that's how companies loose their identity...

To succeed in the business world you have to strive for the best or over time you loose your identity and just become one of those companies that publishes a tonn of mediocre games that nobody really knows about.

The strenght of the huge companies is that they have the financial power to really hype 1-2 title a year and maximise the revenue they can get out of it...EA just need to figure out which games those are...

The more of the following you have the more likely unusually high sales for your game will be:

• Part of a very popular long running franchises
• Have a massive marketing campaign
• Is unique in the market place
• Is very high quality
• Is accessable to a wide variety of gamers
• Provides a lot of value

Any Wii title I can think of that has several of thos are million selling games, and most that have almost all of them are multi-million selling games ...

We could always look at the median sales of said 'have nots' as opposed to mean. Unfortunately, we don't have any sort of numbers from NPD, so we'd have to differ to VGC for median values among the top games. 

The median for the top games, by console, would be (top 100, FYI):

Wii: 356,000

X360: 462,000

PS3: 245,000

A lot of people seem to have taken my talk of investment as meaning big budget. That's not necessarily the case. Many of Nintendo's projects have had large budgets, to be sure, but many have also had small budgets. I doubt Fire Emblem and Warioland were expensive to make, and certainly a lot of WiiWare games didn't cost much, but I bet they've turned a good profit. Wii Play has earned massive amounts of revenue for how much it must have cost.

The point is that the size of the return correlates to the size of the investment. A publisher which spends $20 million on a single Wii project will likely see similar returns as another publisher who invests $20 million in four Wii projects. But the volume of money invested in any size of Wii project still hasn't rivaled the huge investments made in HD gaming, except from that one publisher who's making all the money.

I'm just replying to a small part now, but I'll probably write something more later.

I wonder a bit about the "13 percent of the Skus that were released on the Wii accounted for 80% of the sales.

Does this mean it only counts sales of the ones that were released this year overall, or just for the 13%?

Anyway, on to some maths.

According to VGChartz, there were 253 games released in Americas in 08. 13% of that is 33 games.

The top 33 games sold 66M (out of 83M). That's what this means

Now, I think this doesn't exclude the 07 releases (although it definitely excludes Wii Sports), but that is pretty irrelevant overall.

Mario Kart Wii + Wii Fit (11M) alone stand for 13.3% of the Wii's total SW sales in 08 (Americas).

Add in SSBB and Wii Play (10.5M) and you have 26%.

This means that the next 29 games sold 43.5M

I find this a bit odd. That's an average of 1.5M.

According to VGC, Wii only has 2 more titles that broke 1.5M (one at 1.49 though).

So those numbers (article, even though they're NPD) seem to be incorrect.

That is, unless they count Wii Sports, which I'm starting to believe they do.

That puts it into a completely different perspective, or wait, does it?

The top 5 now sold 34M (Wii Sports = 12.5M).

So the following 28 need slightly above 40M, still almost 1.5M. Doesn't change a lot....

There's something odd about the numbers in the article.

Is there a place where you guys get those huge numbers these publishers spend on HD games?

A quick summary, for the uninitiated:

I posted an article stating that 13% of Wii games had 80% of the sales, as opposed to the HD ratio of 14-19% having 80% of the sales.

Groucho responds by saying that if there are twice as many Wii games as 360 games (not completely correct, but close enough for now), and if Wii games cost half as much to make as 360 games (which is on the upper-end of the spectrum, with many sources putting it closer to a third, but fair enough), then it follows that the average 360 game is more likely to recover "a fair portion" of their cost. Somehow, customer satisfaction gets involved: the details are unclear.

Assumption 1: sales are fairly evenly distributed amongst the reamaining 20% of titles for both systems.

Support: N/A

Assumption 2: There is roughly an equal proportion of "shovelware" (i.e. incredibly cheap titles that are intended to break even with extremely small sales) on the Wii and 360.

Support: N/A

Assumption 3: The Wii consumer is not benefitting because 3rd parties are not making as much profit on the Wii as the 360, which is bad because this will lead to decreasing third-party support.

Support: N/A

I ask for some support for any of these assumptions. Groucho responds with the OP, and a bit of thought. I think that the only way this works is if you don't put any thought into this. I'll let all of you decide who's right.

Two problems here: first, this data shows that the sales are most definitely not evenly distributed (look at how much the sales spaced out from your first set of numbers to your second set). More importantly, I'm unsure how wise it is to use VGChartz data to fill in the gaps for NPD data, as not only does the former include data not used in the latter but there have been some fairly wide discrepancies recently (I believe you yourself posted something similar).

Second, you're using the Top numbers to tell us what's going on in the games that are not in the top...

Gamasutra, publisher's interviews, etc. They're scattered all over the place.

The NPD's rather emphatic about not counting Wii Sports, so that's not it. My guess is that the discrepancies come from three sources: the NPD only covers the U.S., the numbers even for the U.S. can be quite different for some titles, and most importantly, I don't believe the NPD limits itself to titles released just this year, but includes all 400+ in its analyses. Considering the fact that Wii Play is an early '07 title, I'd say that's almost necessary.

ClaudeLv250 said:
aavidbacon said:
Not quite true.
If you´re a 3party dev, then most of you games are multiplat. Most of the multiplat that also are designed for wii, flop on wii(unless they are for children or are party games). So usually big blockbusters like GTAIV are PS360 only. To Rockstar the Hd userbase work as one. So for multiplat games, it works making PS360 exclusive, because they sell very well. Wii only sells Nintendo. Take a look at the best 3rd party title on wii, it doens´t come close to GTA.
Why would a dev make a exclusive to wii to sell 2-3mln LTD if he can make a PS360 title that sells 6mln.
"
B
I
N
G
O

Nintendo is destroying the industry!
When PS60 get price cut, Wii is through.

Wii Fit!!????
Nintendo is abandoning the hardcore!
When this game comes out, THEN the PS360 will take off!

Nintendo not serious about online.
Wii is just a party machine.
Wii sells because it is cheap.

Pachter says…
Nintendo milks profit due to inferior hardware!

Gamecube started well at first too…

Wii is a fad!

FREE

LOL minigames!!1!
PS3 is on a ten year plan.

Wii is two Gamecube systems put together by duct tape!

Argh!!! Non-games!!!1!!!

Wii-mote is a gimmick.

Stupid casual gamers!
Only Nintendo games sell on Nintendo systems.

When HD adoption rate goes up, Wii is finished.
Who cares about Wii sales? All the real games are on PS60!

Where are the third parties? LOL!

VC is overpriced rom dump!
What happens when people get bored of Wii Sports?



People shold really leave the joke posts to rol, he does a better job of filling up the bingo boad.

Also we need to update this thing."






"If you have the time, add the top 10 Wii games sales. You will see that they add to more than 50% of the total software sales. Out of this ten, 8 are Nintendo and 1 is Multiplat. How many aren´t minigames? How many aren´t party games?

If you prefer the wii and it´s games, great. It have great titles, but it´s selling because of the top 10 games. People are buying it because of them. The numbers show it. If you are curious take a look by yourself.

The best selling multiplat has 3.8 mln units sold and it´s a party game, GH. Like I said, why concentrate on the wii if they can reap better results on the other two. Of course, the wii will see more titles and will have the largest library this gen, but the majority of the 3rd party will be shovelware. Titles like Fallout and GTA will continue to arrive to the HD consoles."



I posted this some weeks ago, reasoning that wasn´t worth for the 3rd parties to go wii only, as aparentelly, develop for all three wasn´t possible for all titles.
Well, now I see people arguing that wii still sells more software, 1st and 3rd party, but what´s the point if the that sales is concentrated in a few titles.
In matter of fact, wii only needed to have 20 titles to have the success it has now, either hw or sw wise. This top 20 is the reson people are getting a wii anyway. i just think is kind of pointless to release more titles. The PS3, with 80 mln LTD (my prediction) have a shot of having more mln sellers than wii (140mln LTD) in the end of this gen. My bet is the unusual lack of 3rd support for the gen leader.

This is interesting, I wonder how it links in with that Nielson survey which indicated that of the next generation platforms the Xbox 360 was played a significant % more than the PS3 and the PS3 was played a significant % more than the Wii in terms of time devoted to it. If Nintendo games have a longevity with consumers that many Xbox 360 and PS3 games do not, then wouldn't it also imply that once they have a variety of games your average Wii user will purchase less?

Granted, we haven't seen any effect of the sort up until now. We can see the Wii's average software sales % is about equal with its current market share. We haven't seen the Wii software sales ratio with market share decline, however the userbase is very young in terms of only owning the console given the rapidly accelerating sales over the past year and short time on the market. I believe however that if the ratio between market share and software market share slips it may be due to people playing the games longer and the system less than other consoles on the market so they would not have as much need to purchase additional software.