While the attach rates of the 3 consoles are similar, best-selling Wii titles skew heavily toward those developed by Nintendo. A new metric must be introduced that is more relevant to 3rd party developers, as they decide on which platform to develop games.

3rd Party Attach Rate (3PAR) is a metric calculated by filtering out 1st party titles from each console's attach rate; it represents the average number of 3rd party titles purchased by a given console's owner.

For example, Nintendo has sold 439.83 million software units. Of those, it has published 232.19 million, leaving 207.64 3rd party published titles. With a userbase of 65.16 million, its 3PAR is 3.19. The 3PARs for all three consoles are:

Wii: 3.19

PS3: 5.18

360: 7.42

HD (PS360): 6.39

With a similar amount of consoles, PS360 has double the 3PAR of the Wii.

Potential explanations for this large discrepancy include:

1. Higher quality PS360 titles: 3rd Party titles on the HD consoles are of much higher quality than those released on the Wii.

2. Wii owners heavily prefer Nintendo titles: Many Wii owners may only trust Nintendo to make good games and thus shy away from games not from Nintendo.

3. Nintendo games are unmatched in quality: Nintendo's titles really are that much better than those created by 3rd parties and thus sell well based upon quality, and not brand trust.

The argument that Wii owners are casual may also hold, but since the base attach rates are similar across all 3 consoles, it fits under explanation 2: casual gamers trust only Nintendo's casual games.

While explanation 1 suggests that third-party developers could theoretically create games that sell well, it is difficult to discount explanations 2 and 3 in explaining the 3PAR discrepancy. And it is difficult to justify explanation 1 when many critically acclaimed 3rd party titles have not sold well on the Wii.

With 3rd party developers announcing their shift toward PS360, it is difficult to argue against them when the Wii's 3rd party attach rate pales so much in comparison to PS360.

im guessing u dont like the wii. but ur thread is silly cuz most major third parties never supported the wii so no need to abandon it. selling over 200 mill software without much quality indicates the wii is a great console for third parties.

But HD development generally costs the double or more the development for Wii, so attach rate means just a part of the whole profit. And there are really too much problems with third parties on Wii that we can't just speak of attach rate because without a decent marketing or developing a game which just fans have a reason to buy (on-rails shooters, RTS...) the game is doomed...

I agree that first party games sell excellent while third party ones sell often like crap, but very often is a third party problem (Little King's Story? Marketing. Muramasa? Too. Resident Evil
__ Cronicles? On-rails. Madworld? Niche title. The Conduit? poor reviews. FFCC? Too short...).

Whoa, whoa, whoa! 3rd party developers are not abandoning the Wii. It gets the most 3rd party software of any console.

Quality 3rd party games is another story.

3rd parties are abandoning the Wii?

It seems to me that there's always some excuse for why a good third party game on the Wii doesn't sell well. Where are the big AAA titles for the Wii that match up with Nintendo's offerings? There just aren't any. It's not like the other consoles where you'll see games from third parties performing and selling well. I've been gaming for 20+ years and no system has disappointed me as much as the Wii. The games library is weak, the graphics are way behind the other consoles, the online play is awful, the accessories you need to buy for local multiplayer cost a fortune. I loved the NES and SNES and Nintendo have made some of my favourite games of all time, but you've gotta have a screw loose to think the Wii stacks up against the PS3 or 360 unless you're a huge fan of SD shovelware, or you don't mind only getting access to 2 good games per year.

Maybe if 3rd parties invested as much in the Wii as they did in the "HD" twins, rather than on-rails spin-offs no one gives a shit about, they'd yield the same results.

You may also look at how many softwares has been released on each console to have a better picture of who is supporting who and who is abandonning who.

Last time i checked, there were something like (sorry if memory is unprecise) :
- 360 games on Wii
- 280 on XB360
- 220 on PS3.

the problem of the Wii is not the support of 3rd parties in its entirety, but the low number of AAA (AAA PS2 bugdet) titles they release for the system.

This is one of the classic excuses. Perhaps you could explain why the console that's the market leader by a large margin, hasn't seen this kind of investment? The highest rated third party Wii title on Metacritic that isn't available on any other platform is Zack and Wiki, which after 2 years on the market sold a whopping 126,000 copies. Maybe that's why. It's the 15th highest rated title out of 558 games. If it was called Mario and Wiki, maybe it would have stood a chance. Mediocre titles like Mario & Sonic at the Olympics get eaten up by the public compared to games like this.

Zack and Wiki whining in 2010? Mods, please run an IP check.