another reason some people believe the 360 is gonna come in 3rd is because of the lifespan.. people are speculating that their next system might be announced as early as 2009 or 2010.. this is not what i believe personally but dont think those thoughts arent out there

i Think the new console may be announced in 2010, but 2011 is the release date, and ive heard they are not just going to disconinue the 360 like the xbox

Wow. Quite the heated debate going on in here. Too late for me to comfortably jump in, so I'll just watch.

@ Lost tears of Kain

"profits for the victory of the console maker yes, but victory for the console owner is attach rates because attachment rates lead to more companys maing more games for that system which then = more games"

Attach rates aren't as important as you're making out. Software sales, plain and simple, is what developers look at. Say console A has an install base of 10 million and an attach rate of 10 games and console B has an install base of 100 million and an attach rate of 5, which do you think is the more financially viable console to develop for?

It also makes little sense to compare attach rates as the average 360 and PS3 owner has had his/her system longer than the average Wii owner, it goes without saying that a gamer's collection will grow over time. Also the 360 and the PS3(mainly due to ports) have more high quality titles than the Wii so it's quite a misleading stat and can't really be used to to give a reliable picture of Wii owners buying habits relative to the other consoles.

Realistically, you can't really expect any of the consoles existing (much) longer than 4 to 6 years before they bring out a follow up console. I wouldn't expect Microsoft to release a console in 2009 because that would be twice when they released a console after only 4 years (meaning that people would automatically expect a short life), and whether Microsoft aims for a 2010 or 2011 release will (probably) depend on how the console sells in 2008.

I would say that Attach rates don't decide what systems get what games. Instead it's total software sold. 360 is kicking ass either way. But a company would rather do 600,000 K with a 25% attach ratio then 500,000 K with a 55% ratio. As the number of consoles owned rise, the attach ratio is going to naturally shrink vs the rise of cheaper games being on the market/more games that cater to more genre of players.

Attach ratios really suck at predicting anything. Hence why instead companies will just go with total number of software sold for a similar game.

A few things:

#1. We do have X360 software sales, Microosft has consistently stated and shown that the X360 in Europe has the highest attach rate ever for software, totally destroying your baseless claims of European countries/retailers not stocking X360 software. The X360 attach ratio for software is around 5.7-6.0 in Europe, and has been above 4.5 since last year. So if anything, European software leans in the favor of the X360. Sports games, like in the US, fail to chart for the Wii whereas they've done well in 06 and 07 for the X360 platform in most countries.

#2. XBLA will kill Wiiware, because it has a 2+ year headstart. There are 100+ games in dev for WiiWare? That's nice, but the X360 has just as many in development. The X360 has cornered the market in such software, and has had the backing of every major developer (sans SE) for the XBLA platform. Capcom, Konami, Ubisoft, as well as others already have released titles, and plan many, many more. That's ontop of the 50-odd exclusive, non-remakes out there.

#3. Carlos, if the Wii only has a 4.0 attach ratio, and 150m units sold, it'll be the lowest software-selling #1 console since the SNES. The Playstation 2 has sold OVER 1.3 billion software units. Therefore, it's a trickle-down effect: mediocre 3rd party sales in the West = no/few exclusives, which will continue to hurt the Wiis poor attach ratio. I understand the whole "oh it's moving decent software since there are so many hardware units", but again, the numbers have stagnated for 12 months. No console has done that, ever, except for handhelds. At some point, it's either going to change, or Nintendo might not get alot of happy 3rd party developers.

I'm not trying to be on the anti-Wii train, but I'm trying to be honest. Not everything is beyond perfect in Nintendoland. With the Wii getting alot of ports, and second-rate games, as well as multiports is hardly a sign of a PS2-like console leader. And everyone in the Wiicamp is saying that it's going to blow the PS2 out of the water: exactly how is it going to do that when a supposed uber-unique game that's supposed to be a million-seller, Zack & Wiki, bomb in both the US and Japan, going to send signals to developers to jump on with major efforts?

And having said that, it always makes me tend to believe that the race is going to be alot, alot closer than you 150m+ Wii sellers think.

Youve still yet to provide a source, and its doing fine, not really poorly in europe. Second 360s total sales 66% is in america so 70-80% in america is actually just fine. And again your giving me no source.

The source is this site. Im too lazy to look for past threads however...

We don't have weekly numbers for euro software, but you can look at the sales of some 360 games to check that they sold by far the most in America, while wii games sell almost as well in Europe than America, but we the Wii owners don't have exact numbers to gloat about this :).

Take Japan in comparision... sure, the xbox 360 may have a good attach ratio there. However with so few consoles being sold, it doesn't really matters. Its the same situation in Europe to a lesser extent, attach ratios doesn't matters when your competition is selling 4x more hardware than you.

Wii, around 140k week in EU... lets say it has an ultra poor attach ratio of 3.0, thats 420k software per week.

xbox 360 around 40k/week... attach ratio of 7.0 = 280k software per week. 

Thats why attach rate isn't very important IMO.

IM stating by this, is that even with fantastic 1st party, you have to have huge 3rd party to rule, look at N64, some of the best games ever made, yet without major 3rd party support ps1 dominated. Ps2 dominated because of one thing, completely superior 3rd party support.

Same goes with both the other two consoles, i think in all im stating is wii wont have superior in this, unlike the ps2 did last generation, unless time changes

It can be said that the 360 has the best 3rd party support right now, yet it is not helping a lot...  Sony did some great things with the Play station brand, thats why they started strong and with that strong start they gained a lot of 3rd party developers.

Now Nintendo made the right desitions and they started strong, thats why they will have great 3rd party support, however the 360/ps3/pc should share a lot of good 3rd party games as well. 

You never said first quarter just early 09, but even with that its still 3.25 to 3.5 million wiis a month

I also never said beginning of 09, and you are just making the average, without taking into consideration that most sales will be on holidays... however i agree that my prediction depends on two factors to be true, a Wii price cut and Nintendo improving their Wii production.

Im technically already have a wii, but still even with those system sellers, its not like the other consoles do not possess others. Ps3 has the best lineup and by stating this your saying the ps3 should just sky rocket as well, heck all 3 consoles should. Again lets go back to what you said above that all consoles sell better in its second half, with this stated your predicting a 200-300 million wii sales after its life time total.

I do not see any system seller for the 360 outside of GTA 4, and Gran turismo 5 for the ps3. Don't expect games like KillZone 2 or Too Human to be system sellers, because they won't be... 

Other games like LBP or MGS 4 will only be "small" system sellers IMO... they will sell some consoles, but not a lot. Monster Hunter 3 Wii will be another small system seller, its going to push consoles, but mostly in japan.

Smash bros, Wii Fit, Gran turismo 5, GTA 4 can sell consoles for a long time, almost everywhere around the world.

Final fantasy 13 would be another one, however i don't expect that game until 09.

profits for the victory of the console maker yes, but victory for the console owner is attach rates because attachment rates lead to more companys maing more games for that system which then = more games

Read previous posts about attach rates and why they don't matter. Capcom is not worried about Konami having good or bad sales on the Wii. As long as the Wii keeps doing well in software sales, and as long as they make profits from their own games, they won't care about how many games Wii owners are playing.

*sigh* I wasn't going to jump in until stickball's last post. There is so much wrong in there....

Starting with the XBLA statement, If you count every title available the Wii has an unmached list of backcatalog titles including most of the best games of all time already on there, and has been making globs of money on them. When they DO finally start adding Wii Ware titles (some of which look just as complex as even the best XBLA titles) there is no reason that the XBLA library would even be close to the Wii's.

Nintendo announced many major 3rd party companies have made begun production on Wii Ware pitches including giants like Capcom (Yes, I know XBLA has SF2HD) and Square Enix. Most XBLA titles are made by Microsoft or Microsoft 2nd parties. With by far the weakest back catalog I'd even go as far as to say that XBLA has the weakest prospects of any system in downloadable games. The PS3 right now probably offers the best due to full games like Warhawk.

Compare downloadable game scores:
http://xbox360.ign.com/index/reviews.html?constraint.bool.game.xbl_arcade=is_true&constraint.not_null.article.overall_rating=is_true&ordering.order=desc&ordering.attribute=article.review_date&constraint.return_all=is_true&constraint.max_rows=40&constraint.locale=us&sort.attribute=article.overall_rating&sort.order=desc
http://wii.ign.com/index/reviews.html?constraint.not_null.article.overall_rating=is_true&ordering.order=desc&ordering.attribute=article.review_date&constraint.bool.game.playable_download=is_true&constraint.return_all=is_true&constraint.max_rows=40&constraint.locale=us&sort.attribute=article.overall_rating&sort.order=desc

Even now, the Wii's massive backcatalog blew away the 360's XBLA selection in under a year. Absolutely destroyed it in fact. With the adition of major 3rd party games on Wii Ware there will be no comparing the two.


Now, on attach ratio, it's ridiculous to call it's first year attach ratio the attach ratio of it's lifetime. It's even more ridiculous to criticize Zack & Wiki sales based on the first week when A) Most retailers didn't stock it in week 1, B) Many games have experienced this problem and still been very successful such as the game my avatar is from, and C) Capcom themselves said they were more than satisfied with week 1 sales.

Also, if attach rate and first year TP support meant anything, the DS wouldn't be the leader right now. Instead, the DS has the overwhelming majority of TP support, even with a mediocre attach rate. The DS also had 2 full years of crappy TP support, even if you wouldn't know it looking at it right now.

 #1 Check my previous posts about software sales in Europe... attach ratios don't matter when you are so behind of your competition in hardware sales. I used an attach ratio of 3.0 for the Wii and still would be enough to have a large advantage.

#2 I don't think that was for me... however besides WiiWare we also have the VC games. Anyway, i don't think neither XBLA nor WiiWare are strong selling features.

#3 Yeah, however i only used a 4.0 for attach ratios... more likely it will be AT LEAST 7.0 by end of gen... that would put the Wii over 1 billion of software sales as well. However i find hard to predict attach ratios so thats why i only used what we have right now, a 4.0 (however i thought it was almost 5.0?)

Finally, nobody, including Capcom predicted Zack & Wiki would be a million seller... they are aiming at 620k for RE:UC and thats coming from a much bigger franchise. They even stated in their forums that Zack & Wiki wasn't aiming at 1m+ when people asked about expectations.

Most people agree that something like 400-500k worldwide for Z&W would be enough to make capcom happy. It's a budget game after all