I must admit I find the OP's methodology a tad dubious.

finalsquall said: I was thinking the same about downloadable demos. Some games that I have downloaded from the psn, have made me reconsider buying them or at the most renting them. Plus... no need to buy the mags anymore :P I have a whole box full from 1997...

I have around 50-55 ORIGINAL games for PS2. Not pirate games, original games that i purchased in regular way from retailers. I admit not buy all of the first day they were on the market. Some i bought after a year when price was little lower, around 10 are used that bought from retailers.  So what am i trying to say is this. If there was no piracy attach rate would be easily 20-1 or even 30-1  if you have that system for 5 or 6 years.

 

TWRoO said: i reckon the 360 might be able to manage 9 or 10 games per console, which is quite phenominal really, but unless you include Live downloads as purchases it wont make 15-20. ps3 i reckon might end up about 7/8 which is still really good.... i mean in Jp it is still under 2 games per system, US is good atm with just under 4, Eu i imagine is about 3. thing is its generally systems that sell fewer hardware units that get higher attach ratios, which is why i expect 360 to be highest this gen. tell you what... an ultimatum. I reckon if ps3 manages more than 40mil units WW it's ratio will definately not exceed 10.

 360 already now has average of 5-1 They said it durring E3

1. I am not sure the demo's have any effect on the quantity people buy, I think that's more of an issue of demographics (demo's won't make more money available in all people's pockets).

2. I see demo's as a more immersive form of advertsing than anything else. And even here, it's a fairly small subset of the users even aware their machines can download demo's (recent surveys show that many videogame owners... including the new systems... aren't aware of their online, nor video, nor DVD playing abilities).

#2 above would have to change even before #1 could then be discounted...

Globox82, you're just buying into the piracy bullcrap. People who won't buy the games won't buy it whether they can pirate or not.

If the game is good, people will buy it.

by this site 360 ratio is now 6:1 in America and about 3.5:1 in Jp, [though Jp numbers will make little difference added to America], i reckon Eu numbers might be enough to pull it down to 5 - 5.5

thats partly why i said 360 will be highest.... i mean by the end of 2002 ps2 in Japan had an attach ratio of about 4, and it's currently about 5.5, i know thats just Jp and it wont be the same WW but the ratio only goes up slowly once the machine has been introduced properly... so for 360 ratio to double 5 years from now is damn good. other examples; [Jp only] 2002 x-box ratio was about 2... in 2005 it was still under 3. 2002 GC was 3.5 ... now it's still under 5.5 again that's only Japan, and home console ratios seem to be smaller but in WW terms you shouldn't expect even 360 to end much over 10 even with optimism.

@ the OP: But each of the consoles also has a reason why they would NOT have an especially good attach rate.

--The 360 has games on XBLA that will take up people's game time that would otherwise be spent on retail games. (If you count XBLA games then the 360 already has the best attach rate in history, I bet.)

--The PS3 has been bought by a considerable portion of its audience as a Blu-ray player that also plays games. Also, Sony is developing its own version of online game shop.

There's also the chance that demos could hurt the sales of bad games. Even if a company doesn't release a demo because they know their game is bad, people might get into the habit of always trying before they buy, and they'd never give the game a chance.

The major thing that hurts game sales is used games and rental places. On my PS2 i owned about 75games during its lifespan. I only payed full price for about 10 games, blockbuster and ebgames, are great for picking up games for 20-30 dollars. pay 30 for a game play it for about 3 months then trade it in and get more games.

Back in the good old PSX days, I'd buy the Jampacks, and The Official Playstation Magazine (for the demos). I was also a member of the Playstation Underground. The free demos were pretty cool for a while.

After a while though, I only started playing the demos of the games I wanted to buy already, instead of every demo on the disk. Before long, my opinion became "Why am I wasting time playing this demo when I already know I'm gonna buy the real game and have to start all the way over?" Even now, looking at the shelves of PS2 & XBOX 360 games I have, I only see a few games (maybe less than 10%) that I actually played a demo of before I bought (of course, I honestly do download a demo for every Live Arcade game before I buy it; nostalgia can be a bitch). Hell, Mario Kart for the Gamecube came packed with the only Gamecube Demo I ever saw, and I didn't buy ANY games on that disc. And, the demo for Tenchu Z actually made me NOT buy a game I intended to buy.

Of course, this is just me. There may be another gamer who's downloading demos and buying games they never even knew they wanted to buy.