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Forums - Microsoft - The Xbox 360 is such a software beast, but why??

Alic0004 on 10 March 2009

Has anyone mentioned its dashing good looks?

Or maybe... the fact that it has about twice as many highly rated games as the Wii and the ps3?



 

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Xen on 10 March 2009
point x said:

1:xbox 360 users, enjoy ''buying games'' no ''eating hype in game sites'' ,.?

2:the xbox live is very, very, very diferent .

3:we are  real  hardcore games.

 

The 360 owners is games!

 



Squilliam on 10 March 2009

You need to know the average length of time the different consoles have been owned to work anything out. Without that, anything you try to figure will be wrong.



Tease.

Grooski on 10 March 2009
phisheep said:
NightAntilli said:
phisheep said:
Darth Tigris said:
Can someone please explain to me why the 1 year head start makes a difference? I'm doing several things at once right now and just can't wrap my head around it. I thought I remember reading that the ratio is supposed to go down as a console gets older (I think that was a VGC article if I'm not mistaken).

 

I’ll try – but it isn’t the easiest of things to get your head round.   First of all, remember we are talking about the attach ratio/tie ratio. That is, the number of software units sold divided by the number of hardware units sold. We’re not talking about absolute hardware or software numbers (which obviously go up with time).   Now, just for ease of understanding. Let’s take a fanciful scenario.   Suppose there are two consoles, X and Y, both equally popular, both with similar games available, and everyone who has either console buys a new game every month.   And suppose console X has been out two years and console Y has been out one year.   And suppose both consoles have been selling at a consistent rate since launch.   As console X has been out for two years, the average console X has been in the users hands for 12 months. So they’ve bought 12 games. So the tie ratio is 12.   As console Y has been out for one year, the average console has been in the users hands for 6 months. So they’ve bought 6 games. So the tie ratio is six.   And the only difference between the consoles is that X has been out twice as long, which gives it twice the tie ratio.   That make sense?
 

You're not doing what you said. You would have to do, 12/12 =1 and 6/6 =1 also.

 

Um, yes I am.

If (on average) each console has 12 games then software/hardware is 12/1 which is 12. That's the attach ratio/tie ratio which is the headline figure that people get hung up on.

If  instead you divide 12 (games) by 12 (months) you get 1, true. That gives you how often people buy games for the console, which is a much better measure and the one I prefer, but isn't the one that makes the headlines. And it doesn't explain why the tie ratio depends on how long the console was out, which is what I'm trying to explain.

 

This is exactly right and why LTD attach rates are very misleading. Take a look at the NPD sales data for 2008. We can show how many games are bought in 2008 by each console in the US for that year.

 

Total unit US software sales for X360: approx 50 mill

Total installed US base as at 31/12: 13.8 mill

Total US sales/system = 3.62

 

Total unit US software sales for PS3: approx 27 mill

Total installed US base as at 31/12: 6.8 mill

Total US sales/system = 3.97

 

Total unit US software sales for Wii: approx 70 mill

Total installed US base as at 31/12: 17.5 mill

Total US sales/system = 4.0

 

All data is obtained at Gamasutra here

 

What it shows is that per unit of installed base in the US, software sales are actually lower on the X360 than the PS3 and Wii in 2008. This could be due to the higher levels of replacements, or, most likely, higher levels of piracy.



phisheep on 10 March 2009

@grooski: That's a handy rule-of-thumb calculation, and makes the point.

It does slightly understate the rate of games sales because of taking full-year software against end-year hardware. To get average hardware in users hands for the year you'd need to take an earlier figure. June if sales were flat through the year, but because of the Christmas boost probably August would be better.

Taking the August 2008 NPD against 2008 software we get:

Wii: games 70m, consoles 11.9m, ratio 5.9, months per game 2.04
X360: games 50m, consoles 10.9m, ratio 4.6, months per game 2.6
PS3: games 27m, consoles 5.3m, ratio 4.6, months per game 2.4

Which makes the same point you do, but I think the numbers are closer to the actual rate of game purchase.

...

On a side note: there was a similar thread last year and I rather felt I was a lone voice in the wilderness then - it is nice to have the opportunity to discuss this sensibly!



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Brainslug on 10 March 2009

I think that the XBOX probably has a higher percentile of Hardcore gamers.

The PS3 has a TON of hardcore gamers, for sure but they also have a lot of casuals from the last gen that "upgraded" their PS2s - Not to mention the ones who bought it for a Blu-Ray Player.

I'll state a couple of cases that I know of personally to illustrate my point - I have an uncle who's a doctor, around 40 - he has 2 PS3's in his house, one for movies and one for playing racing games - he's the type who only plays racing games too (namely, gran turismo) so don't count on him to increase the attach rate of the console.

Another friend - owns all 3 consoles - By FAR prefers to play games on his Xbox so when a game is Multi-plat, he buys the Xbox copy - uses the PS3 for the occasional exclusives that interest him (Was not interested in LBP or Killzone) and as an upscaling DVD player.

On the other hand, Everybody who buys the Xbox, buys it to play loads of games - aka, a higher % of hardcore.



phisheep on 10 March 2009

@brainslug:

I don't subscribe to the notion that so-called casuals buy fewer games than the hardcore do - or at least to the idea that this has any noticeable impact on game sales and attach rates.

Sure, there appears to be a sharp divide between those of us who amass games at an alarming rate and those who anecdotally stick to Singstar, Wii Sports and Wii Fit. But the numbers don't lie, and the Wii has at least as good a sales rate as the other two. Which suggests there are far more people than we imagine in the middle ground between the two.

It is also possible that the hardcore with lots of games are far more likely to rent or buy used, which would depress their market impact.



xlost7 on 10 March 2009

Just because half the games are:

A) Being advertised more on the 360
B) Xbox Live
C) Word of mouth
D) The console released first as result has a lead on developer support
E) Microsoft offering publishers money to secure certain titles (SO4..etc)
F) Competitors like Sony offering a high price for their console i.e. PS3 $400 over a $200 360!



Brainslug on 10 March 2009
phisheep said:
@brainslug:

I don't subscribe to the notion that so-called casuals buy fewer games than the hardcore do - or at least to the idea that this has any noticeable impact on game sales and attach rates.

Sure, there appears to be a sharp divide between those of us who amass games at an alarming rate and those who anecdotally stick to Singstar, Wii Sports and Wii Fit. But the numbers don't lie, and the Wii has at least as good a sales rate as the other two. Which suggests there are far more people than we imagine in the middle ground between the two.

It is also possible that the hardcore with lots of games are far more likely to rent or buy used, which would depress their market impact.

I completely agree, The wii sells as many games as any other system - but it's a game machine advertised as a game machine.

What I meant in one of my examples is that selling the PS3 as a media center to the general public gets you exactly that, people who use it exclusively as a media center to watch movies.

As far as my friend who gets all his multi-plats on Xbox - he swears that it's because all the multiplats he's played to date always run better on his xbox - way less glitches. There's a good chance that this kind of opinion isn't an isolated case.

I'm just trying to think of examples that I know of personally that might cause the Xbox to have a higher attach rate.



phisheep on 10 March 2009

@brainslug: Oops sorry - I misread what you were getting at ... apologise for the attack.