Hey AIIAII, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Metroid Prime 3, WiiFit, Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports, Wii Play, Twilight Princess. That sounds pretty great to me, 8 AAA titles.

I agree, yet disagree.

I agree that no one game can truely move a massive amount of units, and cause a game buying public to attach to a system for a sole game. If this were the case, PCE would of sold far better, and so would of the N64 and Saturn.

However, there's an inherant fact that every game is a system seller - regardless if it drives 50 people to buy a system, 500, or 5000. Collectively, 10 to 20 games move hundreds of thousands of systems.

For systems such as the X360 and PS3, I agree that it's very hard for people to attach themselves to those systems for one game, due to price. However, one game (such as EBG, H3, GTAIV, or such) can make consumers take the plunge, if they preceve a good value in their purchase if they are planning on buying other games as well.

IE, Joe consumer buys a X360 during Halo week. He buys it because Halo 3 is out, but he also wants to buy Mass Effect soon, is buying Bioshock, and is also buying Eternal Sonata and an old preowned copy of Crackdown. Which game drove his purchase? Halo3, but the water is very murky: had Bioshock and ES not been there, the purchase might be far more hesitant.

So I do believe that there are games that become "system sellers" because there's enough software around that one major game to justify a purchase - when Zelda:OoT came out, sales for the N64 were at rock bottom, and OoT provided one of the largest boosts the N64 ever had in it's entire US lifespan (I think it moved about 500,000 hardware units out of normal for the month). Were sales of Zelda:OoT the only game that was effected? No. The consumers precieved a strong value purchase because Starfox 64, Goldeneye, SM64, and Banjo & Kazooie also were there as a strong purchase for a system.

This is why, imo, we're seeing increases in sales for the PS3 month over month (since June), and the X360 in Japan year over year: there are enough titles to start garnering more purchases, despite the PS3 being expensive, and the X360 having a negative image from J-gamers.

Personnaly I believe ALL is about

PRICE / BRANDNAME and overall HYPE

But since we are talking about console, games are important too

Xmas, 2006, Gear of war, I thought it was a system seller
September 2007, Halo3, I think it will be

And, for the PS3, there is no system seller but it begins to have good game (better that no games) it is why people think it will help the console a lot.

and for ur friend, that already """"""own -=Competition Console=-“""", I suppose u are mentionning people having a PSX and that dont wanted to buy a N64 ?
But right now, there is still +80M PS2 owners that have dont buy their next gen console, so this "competition" argument cannot be applicate to this gen.
(I dont even mention the +50M gamers that Wii may succeed to create from non-gamer population).

I agree with what you're saying because I believe that it is primarily games which are the reason why people buy systems; what I was trying to say was that I don't really believe that a single game (or small collection of games) really has the drastic impact on game sales that many people think it does.

I haven't been following those two games but okay.

Wii's AAA Titles.

Super Mario Galaxy
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Metroid Prime 3
WiiFit
Mario Kart Wii
Wii Sports
Wii Play
Twilight Princess
Tales of Symphonia
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles

I think people might ask why Wii Play is an AAA title.

I think a AAA title is either a game that sells incredibly well and/or is a game that gets reviews above 9.0.

I agree totally with Stickball.

 Ok, I can see that. But at the same time, a lot of console owners (an awful lot) only have a small collection of games.

One or two system sellers might not convince someone to go out and buy a console, but when they decide that they want a console, then those games help them decide what console to get. Gears sure seemed to help the 360 for a while, and the PS3 sales in Japan is a perfect indicator. Sure they were small jumps, but Gundum Musou and Hot Shots Golf brought relatively big sales jumps. If neither of those games came out the PS3 would probably be doing 360 numbers over there.

Very few (non packaged) games sell to even 40% of console owners lifetime.

Super Mario 64 (~12/32), Nintendogs (~15/45), and Halo 2 (~8.5/24) are the only games in the last 12 years to even come close to the 40% attach rate threshold.

The amazing thing to me is that even with tons of talented studios, and enormous 3rd party support for 10+ years, PS1 and PS2 never had a game sell to more than 11% or 12% of the Playstation user base.  I think Sony encouraged developers to make games for individual regions, rather than with true universal appeal, which is why games like Super Mario Brothers 3 (non pack in/~62 million userbase) outsold every game ever on a Sony platform, and even a game like Super Mario 64 (non pack in/~32 million userbase) outsold all PS1/PS2 games - except for three (GTA: SA, GT3, GTA: VC).   

To me, the other truth that can be seen from this is, as gaming gets more complicated, software sales decline very rapidly given the increases in the overall market.  Paradoxically, this allows more and more games to sell fairly well, despite an increasing (from awful to awesome) range in quality...

If the top selling (exclusive/non packaged) game on Wii, PS3, 360 sells 20 million units, and the three consoles sell 250 million units, what does that say about the quality of games on the NES when Super Mario Brothers 3 sold roughly the same number of copies to only 60 million users?

The ridiculously high attach rates (30%+) of some games suggest that those platforms are essentially defined by one game - to a huge segment of the userbase, while everyone else just needed 'a console'.

What tempts people to buy are the few exceptional titles - the system sellers, and the console itself. But that on its own is not usually enough, they are pursuaded to buy by the quality of other, less well known titles that interest them. People see them as a sort of barometer, every console has a few really big titles, but the amount of quality games on it is a good indication of whether the console is good value to you, and whether it will continue to be in the future.