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Forums - Sales - NPD: Wii software sales are more concentrated on a few titles than 360/PS3

Oyvoyvoyv on 19 January 2009
noname2200 said:
Oyvoyvoyv said:
noname2200 said:


When Klotz looks at platform-by-platform, the Wii numbers are most significant. "13 percent of the SKUs that were released on the Wii account for 80 percent of the sales." The other platforms, he says, are closer to the 80/20 principle.

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

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

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.

Hmm, okay that would help it a bit I guess...

440 titles * 13% =  57 titles.

 

That would mean that the 53 titles need 43M, something that makes sense.

 



http://www.vgchartz.com/games/userreviewdisp.php?id=261

That is VGChartz LONGEST review. And it's NOT Cute Kitten DS

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mrstickball on 19 January 2009
noname2200 said:
mrstickball said:
noname2200 said:
mrstickball said:
FYI, noname, assuming your numbers are correct, then we get the following numbers as average sales for 'have not' titles:

Wii: 61,892 Units/Game
X360: 66,667 Units/Game
PS3: 56,250 Units/Game

But only if we assume even distribution of sales between all the "have-nots." Is there any reason we should do so?

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

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...

If you read what I said, I was using averages for the first set, and median for the second. That's why there's spacing. The first set used the data you gave us.

The reasoning behind using the top-50 was just to get a rough picture of sales. If you want a very indepth (and far more damning) picture of software, then you could use median as well as # of titles released. Again, since VGC only displays the aggregated list of top-100 titles, we'll use your self-admited ratio of 4:3:2 (which is about accurate):

Wii (100th title): 201,249 Units

X360 (75th title): 323,000 Units

PS3: (50th title) 245,000 Units

This would be the best picture we can get with VGC data. Assuming the 4:3:2 ratio is correct, we can assume that titles that do fit in that list of 'have nots' would be best displayed with this data I just posted.

And guess what? VGC states that the sales value of a 'have not' on the 360 is 60% greater than that on a Wii title, which is very close to the argument I made earlier about the 13/87 vs. 20/80 value being 65% greater in favor of a PS3/360 title.

If you forget, the reason I'm using median is to ensure that the data isn't skewed, to the best of the abilities of VGC. Median value helps to do away with anomalies in the have-not values (either too high or two low) to give us a good idea about how much a have-not is selling. Hopefully this explains the reasoning - a median value may be a better picture into the sales values than averages.

 

 

 

 



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

Ratz on 19 January 2009

Nintendo was the only big developer of the VG industry to truly invest time and money in developing games for the gamers that were not the hardcore ones. Nintendo has many years of experience and know-how in designing games for this audience and the fact is that most 3rd party developers don't jump on the Wii train not because they don't want, but because they can't.

For many years, almost all games were targeted mainly at the hardcore gamers. It created the concept that only the traditional gamers will buy games. Nintendo broke that paradigm with Wii and caught the whole industry offguard.

Nintendo is NOT destroying the industry as many have said. They are changing it.

i believe that only at the end of this generation there will be more 3rd party support for the Wii. Will will see a lot of games from big developers that will be total crap but that will be used as experiences to learn how to develop games for the causal gamers audience.



Erik Aston on 19 January 2009

We know the top 4 games for Wii this year, because they were also the top 4 games overall.

Wii Play
Mario Kart Wii
Wii Fit
Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Here's my question: What are third party developers doing to try to compete with these games? Part of the reason these games represent such a huge percentage of total software sales is that third parties, by and large, aren't even trying to compete with them. I'll refrain from a detailled analysis.

And btw... I don't know if I have ever seen so much garbage number crunching and faulty faux-analysis in one thread before.



"[Our former customers] are unable to find software which they WANT to play."
"The way to solve this problem lies in how to communicate what kind of games [they CAN play]."

Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President. Only slightly paraphrased.

noname2200 on 19 January 2009
Erik Aston said:

And btw... I don't know if I have ever seen so much garbage number crunching and faulty faux-analysis in one thread before.

If that was directed at me...sorry! I'll be the first to admit that my stats skills are rusty. Care to point out the errors, so I can improve?

Edit: For example, I'm still trying to decipher what Mr.Stickball was getting at in his last post in relation to the question it's addressing, i.e. "(b)ut only if we assume even distribution of sales between all the "have-nots." Is there any reason we should do so?" Care to help?



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Khuutra on 19 January 2009

Did anyone not expect this?

I mean, the Wii is the home of all the throwaway shovelware this gen. Isn't the fact that sales are more concentrated indicative of the fact that Wii users aren't buying shovelware in equal amounts?

This is a good thing.



outlawauron on 20 January 2009
Khuutra said:

Did anyone not expect this?

I mean, the Wii is the home of all the throwaway shovelware this gen. Isn't the fact that sales are more concentrated indicative of the fact that Wii users aren't buying shovelware in equal amounts?

This is a good thing.

That all the big fish are eating up the small fish?



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Khuutra on 20 January 2009

Consider the state of the "small fish" here.



Lurker on 20 January 2009

It must make third parties angry when they see the same 3 or 4 first party games selling on the Wii and their games not selling as well. Only on a Nintendo system can this happen.



Khuutra on 20 January 2009
Lurker said:
It must make third parties angry when they see the same 3 or 4 first party games selling on the Wii and their games not selling as well. Only on a Nintendo system can this happen.

Because Nintendo games only sell on Nintendo systems?