A sale is a sale. Argueing packins is like argueing that games with advertising don't count because a lot of people don't know about games without advertising. What about 2 for 1 deals? Games that are discounted. Etc.

A games advantages don't matter when it comes down to it. Just sales do. Pack ins do accuraely reflect the number of games sold because they are actually sold.

To not include them would not be accurately reflecting the numbers sold because you wouldn't be counting all of the games sold. All consumption requires is that you purchase something.

Besides, you have the choice of just not buying the system.

I think the people who discount pack-ins really have no idea how many games have been pack-ins. If you start talking retail deals too you basically account for almost every popular game ever. Why? Because there are people who only bought it becasue of the pack-in game. I know, I know shocker. No matter if we are talking SMB, Gran Tourismo, Tetris, Gears of War etc. the list goes on and on. We have no way of knowing what deals everyone got and what mindest they were in. The only games that you can be sure of are PC games, but those have whole different problems.

One thing I do know is that we have the total sales numbers, and those reflect how many people paid money, brought home the game and played it. I can't think of a better rule of thumb then that. I don't care if Nintendo hypnotised people into buying these games or held a gun to their head. If someone paid for a game and has the game system they played it.

As far as Nintendogs and Pokemon why would be discount those and not drop legendary edition of Halo or other games the that had some variety in the packaging?

If pack-ins counted on that list, fully, Hexic would be nearing #1.

Well if we want to include packins I'll just say that the number one game will either be Freecell, Minesweeper or Solitaire. I'm pretty sure they are packaged with pretty much every PC sold. In fact I would imagine the whole top 10 would include packaged PC games, SMB wouldn't even get close.

Its amazing how pointless sales figures get once you start including games that were not actually sold by choice.

The Sims sales are severly underttracked on this site.

They're actually at about 16 million, and The Sims 2 is around 10 million.

Bad job tracking those two. 

 That's such a bad argument. I'm sure you can do better.

there's a difference between super mario bros, wii sports, or sonic 1 from say a bonus game included like hexic, they were a selling point with the hardware,

Any time a game is the reason for the hardware selling I think you would have a better argument that the hardware sale shouldn't count than the game sale not counting...

Really this argument is ill conceived....

Pack-ins should be counted. They are technically sold on the market. Despite them being with teh console, if no one bought the console then no one would have bought the game right. Meaning they are acredited with a reason for buying the console, meaning technically at some percentage the pack in was bought for intention of the game. Making it a legit buy. Of course its already legit cause it's sold on the market, making it bought. The only thing that shouldn't count in this is if you are giving this product away free haha.

I did this a while ago, and though i don't mind it being repeated i find it annoying that I had to keep my thread alive by posting after every 2/3 replies.

Also PACK-IN GAMES SHOULD BE COUNTED FOR THIS....well, my thread was based on it being The top ten Software sales you cannot despute that the software sold whether it sold with something else or not....yes you should take out forced pack-ins when calculating attach ratio but this has nothing to do with that.
I will add a link to my old thread just for fun.