Since you're an expert on the attach rate of classic consoles, what was the attach rate of the NES, SNES, Genesis, Playstation and N64 after being on the market for 12 months?

Which represents 51% of Wii owners, 42% of PS3 owners and 25% of XBox 360 owners.

 There are two things attach rate represent:

1. The percentage of your userbase that spends excessive ammounts of money on gaming
2. How long people have owned your system

Being that the Wii (on average) has been owned for less time than the other two consoles, and it is nearly half the cost do you think that it may be at a disadvantage when it comes to this (mostly meaningless) statistic?

Does anyone know the attach rate of all the systems, i know that the PS2 has sold 1.3bil games on about 120mil consoles. Does this site have these stats located somewhere?

How on earth do you know if games bundled with the SNES and Genesis hindered attach rates? Honestly, can you back this statement up? I'm not being coy here -- it just seems like a completely unsupportable statement, but if you have data to support it, I'm willing to listen.

I think the best evidence is simple common sense here Stick. How can you deny the fact that people who get a (good) game with a system are less likely to rush out and buy another game shortly after? Compared to someone who buys an Xbox360 or PS3, which currenly come with no games in the United States (Except for the rare 80 GB Motorstorm bundle which seems to have sold well under 200,000 units in the US) the odds that someone buys a Wii and goes home with just the system are much higher. Can you please explain how anyone could possibly escape this obvious logic?

A glitch in the Matrix, my friend

+1

I had almost 20 Gamecube games.  We can see how much good that did it.

If the Wii has managed to maintain any kind of comparable attach rate while selling in excess of 500,000 consoles a month, that can only be considered as impressive.

Why does this topic come up every month and why are there always the same comments from all sides on this? Wii including/ not including Sports/Play/ Horrible atach rate/ casual blah/ wii doom/ X360 the best.

Seriously, big glitch in the Matrix.

It is interesting to see the spin on this news.

First there was the Joystiq article -- which is basically reporting facts provided by NPD with some analysis regarding Wii Play (which is a legit point).

The next day, there is a tech.co.uk blog piece which makes the same point ... but also is careful to treat the PS3 extra nice. It rounds its total up to "nearly 4" (while quoting the exact Wii figure). It notes that it is not surprising for a console to be at that point in that stage of its lifecycle. And it mentions about the 40 gig unit going on sale.
http://www.tech.co.uk/home-entertainment/gaming/consoles/news/xbox-360-sells-most-games-per-console?articleid=1743126964

Then on Nov. 2 -- Portal IT out of Romania trumps this as good news for the 360 and tries to count both Wii Play and Wii Sports as part of the attach rate -- using that as an excuse to dish the Wii
http://news.portalit.net/fullnews_xbox-360-still-champion-of-game-sales_462.html

My analysis -- the Wii will always have a somewhat lower attach rate because (1) it has a pack in (at least in NA and PAL) and (2) there are purchases solely for that pack in or for the pack in and another title. Seriously, how many games are all the health rehab/care centers buying. Those 0-1 puchases (maybe they bought Wii Play) reduce the attach rate. Similarly, those who buy the unit for Wii Fit will have the same effect.

Nintendo does not really care because it makes money on hardware and makes more money than anyone else on software.

This can give other developers pause because they don't know how what proportion of that user base is not looking to ever buy another game. But then again, if its attach rate is close to a more traditional system (the PS3), then maybe the issues are not as large as some like to make them out to be.

Mike from Morgantown

(Mods -- if my links are not live, please feel free to help me out and make them live. Thanks).

I actually agree with him, in that the PS3 will sell more software than the Wii. A large percentage of PS3 owners are gamers (hard to tell how many people bought PS3 for Blu-Ray capabilities vs. games) while a very significant percentage of Wii owners are not gamers, so they're not going to be asking for or buying games for Christmas this season. The older crowd is still happy with only owning Wii Sports, IMO.

...or we could just look at how much software each system has sold and be done with it.