Well I got to say tha system sellers are pretty real, and if you don't believe in them I sure hope you don't believe in god either.

Now I will say they don't work the way a lot of my fellow Sony fanboys think they do. Just because X game comes out does not mean Y system will get a huge boost. The way system sellers work is 2 years in you have game abcdefghijk on sytem a, abcdef on system b, and abcd on system c. People then go oh my god system a has abcdefghijk, I want all of thouse I will get that system.

You're right, they didn't mind paying for the PS2. People rushed out and bought the PS2 at a record pace even though it had no games and had a far worse line-up to the Dreamcast ...

I'm not so sure ...

I knew quite a few people who loved Mario, Zelda, were old-school Metroid fans, were huge Resident Evil fans, and loved playing multiplayer Super Smash Bros. or Mario Kart and yet didn't buy a Gamecube because they already owned an XBox or PS2 (or possibly both).

At any point in time (on a console that is selling reasonably well) there are always great games that you haven't played, and great games about to be released, which can prevent you from buying a new console for a handful of games.

I think a lot of people on this thread have stated what I was thinking better than I did and I'm surprised that this thread didn't degrade into a flame war ...

Agreed, I didn't even have to look at the rest of the thread you laid the smackdown on the answer of this topic!!!!

The gaping hole in this argument and all similar arguments is that there is not specific definition of "system seller".  The halo series has moved a lot of consoles.  Halo 3 will move some consoles.  Hot Shot Golf in Japan most certainly moved some consoles.  If the new PS3 FF game hit today, it would move some consoles.  The problem is that "some" is relative...  You can't argue that some of the titles over the years did nothing to move consoles... VF on the Saturn and VF2 on the Dreamcast moved consoles.  Period.  The flip side to that argument is that no one game will ever propel a console into PS2-like sales numbers.  That's just not reality...  

In general I agree with Happy Squirrel's notion that "system sellers" won't turn a console's fortunes around all on their own...usually. But there are some interesting counter-points.

Super NES vs. Genesis: Perhaps too much is made of Donkey Kong Country's importance to Super Nintendo, but it was at least an important factor in turning the tide in Nintendo's favour. I think when you have a close race between two competitors, the "system sellers" suddenly become more important.

Nintendo DS: If you look at the sales, DS in Japan was basically built on system sellers. Third party support was poor, but Nintendo's first party games sold a ton of systems (check out system sales at the launch of Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, Brain Age, and New Super Mario Bros.) and eventually third parties had to support it. In North America DS Lite gets most of the credit but I believe Nintendogs and New Super Mario Bros. deserve some credit as well.

I think with DS the point is that it needed disruptive games that showed what made it good.

Edit - Summary: If everything else is similar, then system-selling games will not allow a console to overcome a huge sales gap against its competition.

"A" = 90 is if you use a scholastic grading scale, which doesn't have a AAA rating. A AAA rating is generally defined as the best rating possible, and given the subjective nature of video game reviews, any title that consistently scores 9-10 of 10, over 90%, or 4.5-5 out of 5 would apply.

However this speaks simply of quality.

A true killer app/system seller has to be able to sell consoles. I think of a game like Beyond Good and Evil, which was widely regarded as a AAA quality title, but never managed to sell. You couldn't consider that a system seller. Or how about Metroid Prime 2? Very well reviewed, yet sold maybe 1m copies, but I'm willing to be the vast majority of them went to people who had already owned GameCubes.

On the flipside would be the Mario Party series, which generally gets crappy reviews, yet always sells well. But I think very few people will buy a Wii just for MP.

In the case of WiiPlay, it is not a AAA quality title, and I don't believe anyone bought the Wii just to play it. In fact, without the wiimote, it's debatable that anyone would even bother with WiiPlay at all (unless it was sold  for very little).

WiiSports is another matter. Many "new casual" gamers (like my father in law) bought the system specifically for WiiSports. While it is not a AAA title, it likely can be considered a system seller for that reason.

 Do get me wrong but what does a AAA title is exactly, is it a big seller or a big game, I don't know. Help

Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Wii Fit are NOT AAA titles.

 The term "AAA title" is a marketing term for a big budget, highly anticipated game that is more or less certain to sell very well.

Okay then exclusives sale consoles...Wii Play can't be played on any other system, so that sold extremely well, Gears of War was an exclusive it couldn't be on the PS3 or Wii, that sold units primiarly cause it was an exclusive.

And here is a thread that discussed what exclusives meant to me

Source: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=5427