So much wrong....

MikeB, you are the one missing the point here.  This guy picked only a few of the VERY few games where the PS3 game sells even remotely close to the 360 version.  If we took all the multiplat games released in the last year, it would be painful to see the dominance of the 360 by nearly 2x in every game for the US.

Also, the PS3 sold more hardware given equal time frames, but at the same time it sold no where near as much software as the 360 did over that time frame.  Hmm... it's either the rediculous price Sony charged or the fact that many people bought them as Blu-Ray players, or people just don't buy games for their PS3s.

can some1 explain to me what time released has to do with attach rate???............if a console has been out for 8 years and has sold 50 million units....and another console has been out for 3 years and has sold 25 million units, the 8 yr console should sell twice as many games in order to claim the consoles sell software equally....how does extra time released factor in? When analyzing attach rate shouldnt the numbers of consoles owned be the only thing considered?

and why should the 360 sell double the software of the ps3??? the 360 hasnt sold twice as many consoles than the ps3

What time frame are you talking here?  If you are still talking in the past year, then that is not fair to the PS3 because of the huge install base advantage that the 360 has.  The 360 would be expected to move more software due to the extra year on the market.

does it really matter who has the better attach rate?
i mean the 360 versions are selling better so why would the developer care if the ps3 sold more per consumer??

Do you by all the software you want at once when you by the console?  No, and neither does anyone else.  It is too expensive to do all at once, and some of the games you want are probably not released yet.

Slowly, over the life of the console, each owner builds up their game library.  So a new owner might only have two or three games, while someone who has had the console for a year might have five or six games.  That messes up the attach rate calculation if console have been on the market for different time periods.

Attach rates are pretty useless to compare anything really.  The only reason it is used is because it is an easy calculation and the data needed for the calculation is usually easier to come by.

The best way to look at things is on a week by week basis.  That way, you can account for time in your calculations.  I've done that here.

I'm talking about the time frame starting from launch of each console, not the past year.  The past year the PS3 has not sold more hardware so it would not make sense if I was referring to that.  People like to tout that the PS3 is trending higher because it has sold more hardware in equal time frame than the 360, yet it sold much less software in that same time frame.

@therepublic

I see the logic in your point but i think that the time frame thing is more anecdotal than anything else, i agree it has some impact but that impact isnt nearly as big as the impact the number of consoles actually sold has on attach rate.

Also a year isnt much at this point, and that point came quite a while ago.
I mean for the time frame to really affect the attach rate u gotta think about how many of those consoles sold are even new enough to figure into the equation, and determine at what point has a console been owned long enough for its impact to diminish to near insignificance.

Lastly, besides those 5.6 million 360 owners who owned a 360 ahead of any ps3 user i dont believe any other units sold afterwards should be considered since these owners are relatively at the same point of their own personal console lifetime. So really u hypothetically add these 5.6 to the 8 million lead of the 360 and u have 13.6 million lead(hypothetically) for the 360. 13.6 million is still short of the 21 million of ps3 ownership to claim double the software sales for 360, let alone 3x the sales.

Here are the numbers you are talking about (126 weeks for both consoles):

PS3 sold more hardware and software, but 360 wins the ratio.

Did you check the link to the other thread that I posted in my reply?  That goes into more detail than I did in my post.

Think of attach rate this way:
It is the average number of games that have been bought by each console owner.

And what is the most important factor in how many games someone owns (on average)?  Time.

Edit: Another way to look at it - Attach rate always increases with time.  Look at where the 360 was 50 weeks ago (6.14 as shown in the post above) and where it is now (7.54).