Interesting stats from VGChartz.com

[DracIsBack]

I'm a bit of a market analysis nerd and I love looking at market trends. Likewise, I tend to get bugged by sweeping statements that don't quite measure up to actual data.

 

I was poking around on VGCHARTZ and found the Wii statistics interesting for games. They show quite nicely that a lot of the Wii myths aren't entirely accurate, but they also show quite nicely that myths do have some basis in fact.

 

You've heard many of the Wii myths floating around:

 

- Everyone bought Wii for Wii sports and nothing else

- No one buys anything but Nintendo games for the Wii. No 3rd party games sell.

- Only casual games sell on the Wii.

 

On vgchartz.com, you can do an analysis that let's you pull a list of top selling games on the console. For fun, I set the meter at "games that sold 1,000,000 copies or more", the typical definition of a hit.

 

http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=&publisher=&platform=Wii&genre=&minSales=1&results=200

 

The results are interesting:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?app=forums&module=post&section=post&do=new_post&f=78

- on the Wii, 139 titles have sold a million copies or more

 

- Those 139, games have moved almost 559 million units in total, for a console that has in turn moved about 97 million units. Definitely puts the "Wii Sports myth" to bed completely.

 

- over 800 million Wii games have been sold but the 139 titles above far outstrip the sales of the other 1000+ released Wii games.

 

- Nintendo absolutely has the biggest titles on the platform. Of the top 10 Wii games, the first 9 are made by Nintendo. Of the top 20, best selling games, 17 are made by Nintendo

 

- Of the third party games in the top 20, all are what I would be casual games

 

- Once you get beyond the "top 20", third parties start having more of a presence in the "million seller club", with a fair number of 3rd parties being able to get million sellers onto the Wii. There are a fair number of kiddie titles and casual titles, but you also see some "hardcore" titles like Call of Duty, Resident Evil, Goldeneye, House Of The Dead, Need for Speed cracking the "million seller list".

 

 

Now that the Wii is winding down, it's interesting to see how it lived. While the myths are often exaggerations of the fact, there is definitely some basis in truth as well.

 

But I doubt we'll see a lot of commentators change their statements to the more accurate:

 

"Wii sold very well overall, due to popularity with casual gamers, but a) had a lower attach rate than other consoles; b) often presented a challenge to 3rd parties to have success compared to Nintendo titles; c) didn't see proportionate success compared to its huge installed base with hardcore titles"

[JamesD]

Selling a million copies on a machine that sold 97 million units (and counting) is about 1% of your market.

I think a better measure would be titles that sell to 5% or more of your market. I think that's where something would be a real hit.

 

Wii sports managed to sell to over 75% of the Wii market. That is phenomenal!

The better Mario titles managed between 10% to 30% of the Wii market. Clearly very popular.

There are 139 Wii games that have sold a million or more but less than 20 titles sold to over 5% of Wii owners or more. Most of those are exclusives.

 

The Wii has decent sales but I think there are far fewer active gamers on the Wii than the other two systems. I'm wondering how many people with a Wii have less than 5 games. Wii Sports, a Mario title, Wii Fitness (which is never used), a band and/or dance game, and that's about it. Seriously, that is what many of the Wii owners I know have and several are wishing they had bought one of the other game systems. I'm not sure they'd buy any more games for another system but the grass is certainly greener over there.

 

About 20% of the top 100 selling titles right now are on the Wii. 31% are 360, 27% PS3, 8% are PC, and the rest are handheld titles. Someone on the Wii isn't buying games or also owns another system and is buying non-exclusives on the HI-DEF machine.

 

While it's obvious that not everyone bought the Wii just for Wii Sports, I think it's clear that at least some % of owners did.

Of the real Wii hits, most are exclusives. While it's not true that no 3rd party games sell on the Wii, I think it's clear they don't sell as well.

Of the real Wii hits, the 3rd party games in that list are dance games. I think those would fall into the casual gamer category.

Casual games certainly aren't the only thing that sells on the Wii but I don't think the numbers entirely prove the idea wrong.

 

 

For comparison...

The XBOX has over 163 games that have sold over a million copies and around 30 titles that have sold to 5% or more 360 owners.

Only about 1/3 of the top twenty are exclusives on the 360.

 

Call of Duty: Black Ops II sold over 6 million copies on the 360 and 4.6 million on the PS3 in a single week. It's sales numbers on either platform would place it in the Wii top 20 and there are at least 20 million fewer of each of those consoles than the Wii. And that's not a platform exclusive game! When combined, those sales would be in the top ten on the Wii and that's for one week... but then it would also be for around 40 million more total consoles than the Wii so go figure.

There just aren't 3rd party titles selling like that on the Wii.

[DracIsBack]

Great additional analysis!

 

Selling a million copies on a machine that sold 97 million units (and counting) is about 1% of your market.

I think a better measure would be titles that sell to 5% or more of your market. I think that's where something would be a real hit.

 

I could go either way on it. Maybe it's a case of hit vs. big hit. Most games don't even sell remotely close to 1 million in the grand scheme of things on any platform. :-)

 

The Wii has decent sales but I think there are far fewer active gamers on the Wii than the other two systems.

 

Very true. Interestingly, I'd love to know how many active vs. non-active gamers there are as I think that's something that applies to varying degrees to all platforms. The Wii moreso for sure. But for example, my Uncle and his girlfriend have an XBox 360 and a Wii. They both get the same amount of game play ... ie. almost none. My best friend and his wife have the same setup. Neither has been turned on in months. iPad gets play a lot though.

 

Someone on the Wii isn't buying games or also owns another system and is buying non-exclusives on the HI-DEF machine.

 

I also wonder if Wii software sales have simply slowed down substantially.

 

While it's obvious that not everyone bought the Wii just for Wii Sports, I think it's clear that at least some % of owners did.

 

For sure. I just have a problem when I hear sites like Engadget come right out and say "most people that bought the Wii just bought it for Wii Sports". That's not exactly correct.

 

While it's not true that no 3rd party games sell on the Wii, I think it's clear they don't sell as well.

 

For sure ... given the size of the installed base. your CALL OF DUTY example is a good one actually. I think Activision has sold 7 or 8 million CALL OF DUTY games on the Wii in total. Shows exactly your point that hardcore gamers do flock elsewhere, but also does show that some Wii gamers are hardcore too. :-)

Edited November 28, 2012 by DracIsBack

[onlysublime]

you really shouldn't use VGChartz. their credibility is next to nil. they don't even detail their methodology beyond some vague speak. no major organization uses their numbers as a credible source.

 

stick to real sales tracking firms such as NPD. In fact, if you notice VGChartz will adjust their numbers after NPD releases theirs and after Microsoft, Sony, etc. release theirs.

[JamesD]

stick to real sales tracking firms such as NPD. In fact, if you notice VGChartz will adjust their numbers after NPD releases theirs and after Microsoft, Sony, etc. release theirs.

If VGChartz adjusts their numbers after everyone else releases theirs, that should make the numbers accurate enough for these observations. They might be off by recent sales but when you start talking all time sales the error should be pretty low.

[onlysublime]

there's no basis for that logic. VGChartz numbers have been way off until real numbers forced their correction. there is no accuracy. the thing about the numbers correction is we only see corrections for numbers that are publicly released. places like NPD do not release the numbers for free. you have to pay to see the numbers. So unless VGChartz paid for access to those numbers, you may only be seeing changes for the numbers that were released publicly which companies such as Microsoft paid so that they can brag about sales of so-and-so product.

 

if all you're looking for is a rallying point in the console wars, then it's useful. otherwise, believing in them is just confirming your confirmation bias.

Edited December 2, 2012 by onlysublime

[JamesD]

You were the one that said they adjusted their numbers after everyone else released theirs, now you say there is no basis for that logic.

Whatever.

[onlysublime]

read what I said. no basis for the logic that the numbers long-term are correct or that the error margin is low. you basically believe that the numbers are correct. and they're not. while they do adjust it, they don't copy the numbers verbatim. and they most likely don't have access to all the numbers as well. it's a hack group and you should understand that.