poll Attachment Rate?

[CapitanClassic]

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Edited December 26, 2023 by CapitanClassic
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[CapitanClassic]

According to this site, the attachment Rate for consoles is fairly low.

 

Not counting close-out prices when stores were liquidating video game stock, what game console did you buy the most games for? And what console was it?

[Zoyous]

Our 2600 library really boomed with the close-outs circa '84, so for me I guess it was my Master System collection. Back then I usually only got games at Christmas and birthdays, plus one or two others throughout the year, so I probably amassed a library of about 12 titles between '87-89 before I moved on to the Sega Genesis. (I ended up selling my Genesis in '91 to get money to go to the first Lollapalooza. 😅 Then I was hooked on playing music in bands and didn't return to console gaming until the Dreamcast era.)

[CapitanClassic]

For myself, it would have to the the Sega Genesis. We bought a used on from a mom-n-pop shop in around Summer 1991, probably around the $150 price cut for the base model.

 

While all the games we bought were used, they were mostly bought before 1995 when the new 32-bit consoles were coming out.

 

Games I can remember buying: LHX Attack Helicopter, Sonic 2, Joe Montana Sports Talk Football, Star Control, Centurion, Power Monger, Phantasy Star II, Shadow Dancer, Revenge of Shinobi , Warsong, Decap Attack, Jewel Master, Mutant League Football, Echo the Dolphin, MERCS, Shining in the Darkness, Streets of Rage, Strider

 

[Steven Pendleton]

I bought exactly zero games for all of these systems when they were on the market, and the system that I have bought the most games for is of course PC.

 

Given what I was given at the time and what I've been able to get in the past 5 or 6 years, the system here that I have the most games for is Mega Drive. My Genesis games all ended up in a landfill somewhere (not by my choice) and about half of my Mega Drive games are repurchases to replace my trashed copies, but in total, counting the replacements, the stuff I haven't been able to replace, and my newly acquired games, I've owned at least 35~40 Genesis and Mega Drive games over the course of my life.

 

Everything else listed here is in the single digits or zero except for Saturn.

[Boschloo]

I can't vote because the Dreamcast isn't on the poll. When it was discontinued, the games started selling for 99 cents at Kaybee and I ended up with over 150 titles. Then the consoles started going for $19.99 and I bought three spares. 

I think this was because I bought the Dreamcast at launch and invested heavily in the system. I even had the fishing rod and the Samba the Amigo maracas (which I can tell you is a hilarious faux-pas since Samba is from Brazil and maracas are not a Brazilian thing). I was in shock when it was suddenly discontinued but I also saw an opportunity to complete my collection.

 

Here's hoping someday SEGA will rise from the ashes and be cutting edge again. 

[Austin]

For full price games, it would probably have been the Dreamcast. For "late in a console's life and stores began discounting them to about $10 a pop", it would have either been the Saturn or the Sega CD/32X, or PlayStation.

[jhd]

 

I got into both the PlayStation and the PS 2 very late in the respective console's lifespan, so most of the new games that I purchased were deeply discounted. I have amassed very large libraries (including used titles) for both consoles.

 

BITD, I had an Atari 2600 for about two years in the early-1980s. I had six (6) games for that system, including the pack-ins Combat and Asteroids. 

 

  

[Tanooki]

I'll be the one that questions the narrative, but how even with that citing are these figures right exactly?  These companies don't report all the games, all the hardware to the point, especially in past decades so it's a guess.  I really find it hard to believe when you see these stories online that the Gameboy was barely used outside of 4 games on average per person?  BS.  The Genesis had twice as many games sold to people vs the SNES ...yeah right.  A lot of it just seems wrong compared to some of the most recent systems where the attachment levels are properly tracked.

[CapitanClassic]

49 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

I'll be the one that questions the narrative, but how even with that citing are these figures right exactly?  These companies don't report all the games, all the hardware to the point, especially in past decades so it's a guess.  I really find it hard to believe when you see these stories online that the Gameboy was barely used outside of 4 games on average per person?  BS.  The Genesis had twice as many games sold to people vs the SNES ...yeah right.  A lot of it just seems wrong compared to some of the most recent systems where the attachment levels are properly tracked.

The sources above have links to how they arrived at their numbers. If you follow a couple of them the sources are financial disclosures of publicly traded companies. So these aren't sales to consumers directly, but sales to department/retail stores.

[Video]

I own very few consoles that I don't have 25+ titles for, and that's due to lack of titles, game.com with only like 18 (out of a total possible of 21 or 22) virtual boy with a total of 6 (of a possible 13-16, depending if I got imports). For most games period its the 2600, with hundreds of titles, and probably thousands of dupes. For while it was relevant, gameboy with over 100 carts. For most money, probably xbox, almost 100 games, and almost all bought day one for full price .

 

I will say, the attachment rate for an average console is low, usually 2-3 titles total. But we are all here because we're abnormal lot. We have an excessive fascination with gaming, maybe in general, or a specified console, but at any rate, we're not "normal" or "average" by any definition, so other than "how many games you got" asking what something like an attachment rate is isn't much relevant.

[Tanooki]

Maybe so, but as a kid/teen in the 8/16bit era I had a library pushing like 40 games or so on NES, SNES, and Gameboy too.  This wasn't some rich kid neighborhood either, and others in the area had like 10+ as well easily.  That's why I find these attach rates to the earlier systems to be more bs than reality but who knows, why I said that stuff in the other post.

[BassGuitari]

Hard to say. Between my NES, Game Boy, Genesis, and PlayStation, they were probably roughly neck-and-neck. I'd estimate I maybe had ~12-15 games (give or take) for each, not counting clearance, used, and rummage/thrift finds. Like most people, my libraries grew substantially as the systems aged and their back catalogs got much cheaper and people started unloading stuff when they upgraded.

 

I had a Game Gear, too, but I think I only ever got four or five games for it BITD. Maybe even less; I can only specifically remember three titles, but I feel like there had to have been one or two more. More games trickled in later, but they may have all been discount/clearance/used/flea market deals.

 

Game for game, my biggest attachment may have actually been to PC; I guess that's kind of cheating since "PC" spans 40 years, but I mean the '90s 386/486/Pentium era specifically. I don't know if I had as many "real" games (full/registered/"big box" versions) as I did for consoles, and I was hooked up with few of them for free so I don't know if they count anyway, but I had all kinds of DOS and Windows shareware compilations and game collections, and standalone shareware titles. Those were dirt cheap, so it was almost nothing to pick one up practically any time I was in a store that carried them (of which there were quite a few). 

[Tanooki]

@BassGuitari Yeah I don't count PC too, I mean I have an inventory list with the rest I do but I don't keep a total on that because we're talking 1990 to present and a lot of what is kept now isn't physical exactly, can be with GoG, but Steam not at all, it's digital fluff even if unlike most console walled gardens carries over if you aren't so insufferable you get TOS locked right out of your account with a ban.  Physically I've got something around or just short of 20 games for it, digital into the many of hundreds.  I was hooked up with a number long erased now because it was oldwarez.

 

See in the day age may have helped with the first rise of man babies taking kids stuff and scooping it to open (in that decade) physical stores to scalp kids and other adults for each piece.  Around 1991-92 these garbage people would go all around stores and grab up the baseball cards and comics for a 25cent pack or a dollar comic, then go to their stores tear the cards open and charge anything from 25 cents to $5-10+ for a card depending on the so called booked rarity in a guide, and the comics would end up being like $3+ for their overhead at that.  I quit the cards, the comics I was forced to sub, then as only so many subs would come to the shop I'd get cut out for the easy money adults and I was over it.  100% of my money from normal weekly allowance and added chores went to the NES, SNES, Gameboy.  Throw in the fact I'd get 1-2 random a year gifted, a few games at a birthday or christmas by the year and that's how I got into the around 40 total I mentioned.  I never wasted money on toys as I'd get them, was old enough not to care, or I'd share so almost everything if not everything was video game budget.  We never rented either, just movies, never games as the parents felt it was a rip off since I had Nintendo Power and enough already to play and replay with which looking back was the right choice.

[scifidude79]

I think PC is the easiest to hang onto. If you count every game that ever ran on just DOS or Windows, you make any other system embarrassed by how small their collections are by comparison. And you can even buy many old games from sites like GOG and Steam that will run on modern hardware, or just build or buy a computer with older components and older operating systems to play those classics. And then if you add in computer systems like the Atari, Commodore, Amiga, etc. to the mix, then PC is impossible to beat. And I say this as a person who has decently sized collections of Atari, NES, SNES, Genesis, GameBoy, N64 and PlayStation games. I'd still rather play old PC games. Often times, due to the hardware limitations of those systems, PC got better versions of games.

[Tanooki]

13 minutes ago, scifidude79 said:

Often times, due to the hardware limitations of those systems, PC got better versions of games.

This is why with the PS4 which I had all of two years half of it was as a media streaming and disc player, it was a let down generation as is the current.  I'm done with consoles outside of hybrids like Switch.  The PC gets nearly all the console games now, and they look better, can sound better, sure as hell run better (60+fps, smooth frame time, etc) all while using due to MS<->Windows a 360 style controller for ease of use.  You take a HDMI cable from the PC to the TV and you're in console heaven anyway without the bullshit and baggage.  Now sure a PC can go for a lot more, but the way things are now you can buy a PC that keeps pace with consoles for nearly a decade.  And on top of that, console games usually are slower to get sales and not great ones, outside of sub based stuff like game pass or when sony gives out little things as they did in the past.  Steam and GoG do hardcore quarterly sales, then the weeklies which usually are less.  Even a new game to the market will see a 20-25% discount in the newest sales, and it's a short time to see 50-66% off while the console game still is at/near full price of $60-70.

 

It's like where's the advantage?  You can argue the PC is more, but if you're a semi-dedicated game player/buyer each title you save $20-30+ dollars on vs the console adds up.  And as a PC can last a couple console generations those consoles are like $500(x2 = 1000) now so that's something.  In the end it's more the mountain of buying the PC up front, but in the long game you're saving money, better performance, can multitask as you buy/download your new game it's not stuck so you can watch a movie, play more titles, mess around on here even.

[scifidude79]

40 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

This is why with the PS4 which I had all of two years half of it was as a media streaming and disc player, it was a let down generation as is the current.  I'm done with consoles outside of hybrids like Switch.  The PC gets nearly all the console games now, and they look better, can sound better, sure as hell run better (60+fps, smooth frame time, etc) all while using due to MS<->Windows a 360 style controller for ease of use.  You take a HDMI cable from the PC to the TV and you're in console heaven anyway without the bullshit and baggage.  Now sure a PC can go for a lot more, but the way things are now you can buy a PC that keeps pace with consoles for nearly a decade.  And on top of that, console games usually are slower to get sales and not great ones, outside of sub based stuff like game pass or when sony gives out little things as they did in the past.  Steam and GoG do hardcore quarterly sales, then the weeklies which usually are less.  Even a new game to the market will see a 20-25% discount in the newest sales, and it's a short time to see 50-66% off while the console game still is at/near full price of $60-70.

 

It's like where's the advantage?  You can argue the PC is more, but if you're a semi-dedicated game player/buyer each title you save $20-30+ dollars on vs the console adds up.  And as a PC can last a couple console generations those consoles are like $500(x2 = 1000) now so that's something.  In the end it's more the mountain of buying the PC up front, but in the long game you're saving money, better performance, can multitask as you buy/download your new game it's not stuck so you can watch a movie, play more titles, mess around on here even.

I actually watch a lot of YouTube where people do budget PC builds and you can build a nice gaming PC for about the price of a PS5 and it's going to perform really well, even in AAA and e-sports titles that people love. If you aren't a builder, you can even find a decent pre-built that will get the job done in terms of gaming for $500. Spend a little more and you'll blow that PS5 out of the water. I'm not including the Series X in this comparison because it's been price dropped to $350 and is hard to beat at that price point. Though, I'd still argue that I'd rather have a PC. In fact, I sold my Series X to a friend at work.

 

Using an example of PC games are better and sticking with the classic discussion. I love the N64. It's a favorite console of mine even to this day. But, there were limitations on it that PC games didn't have at the time. A great example is Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. I bought and beat that game back in the day, then spent years going back and replaying the Hoth battle. It was good for the N64, you had a great game with those cool SNES style moving "stills" with text on them to tell the story. Some years back, I bought Shadows of the Empire for PC and I was amazed to find out that it had fully animated and voiced cut scenes instead of those "stills." If I'd known that, I would have bought that for PC back in the '90s and never looked at the N64 version again. Plus, I can play it at much higher resolutions.

 

Going back to the thread topic and poll, I would probably say it's the SNES for me, given the options. It may have been N64 if I hadn't had to sell my collection about 22 years ago and then rebuilt it years later. But, I probably have more SNES games creeping around for close to 30 years than I do games for any other system.

[Tanooki]

I didn't go budget, I went heavy to last nearly another decade once more.  Did this parts DIY-ish gaming laptop here, then modified it: https://xoticpc.com/collections/advanced-series-gaming-laptops/products/xotic-g70snd-np70snd?F350=16GB DDR5 4800MHz (2X8GB)&F382=500GB NVME SSD GEN 3&F385=None&F213=Stock Liquid Metal Compound&F196=Windows 11 Home&F339=1 Year Manufacturer Limited Warranty

Went to 64GB of memory, 500gb boot/2tb ssd samsung drives, metal coolers on both drives, came with a few discounts, 3 free perks (6fan cooler, raptor headset, and this led mousepad thing)  also ordered a 4port USB3 hub, and another that is a memory card reader of all sizes.

 

Given this old mid i7+16GB ram+nvidia 980 system can do PS4pro and some, but not 5, this is going to be well more ready for years to come.

 

 

You're on point with the budget DIY route, you can get a LOT of PS5 level performance from a PS5 price on a PC being just over 500, but back to what I said, the insta-savings on Steam prices this time of year and quarters, there's your difference and then some.  Buying a console that's just a console like Sony/MS does it because people don't know better or they're easily tricked, or fanboys.

 

Between the NES/FC I'm I think around 160, and SNES/SFC is maybe 120.  The three generations of Gameboy are probably what both those have combined.

[roots.genoa]

I kinda cheated. I only started to get a lot of games (40-50) with the Dreamcast and the GameCube. Before that it was usually a dozen (maybe 20+ for the Saturn), because games were expensive and I didn't buy used games. I voted the PC Engine, but it's a collection I started 15 years ago, with a bigger gaming budget, and a lot of bootlegs.

[Video]

Ah yes, lots of kids had tons of Atari games, but how many were bought new? Attachment rate only counts bought new in stores. Comparing a shitload of games you got for a quarter a pop isn't the same thing. That's why I had three lists, most over all, for 2600, but I largely bought friends collections for a few bucks, and got tons of dupes. Gameboy, but I still largely got inexpensively, but it was a long enough lived system that I bought tons of new stuff as it was still relevant as I got my first job in the mid 90's, and xbox, which was the first console I ever bought day 1, and almost no used titles.

 

Get to modern stuff, well I got 50 or so for switch. No whatever current Xbox and PlayStation. I got a couple dozen for ps4, but like 6 for Xbox one, being locked out of physical hurt, badly. Yes I got discs, but their just keys to download games, and with my internet situation of the time, downloading games at 50-200GIGS a pop wasn't going to happen.

 

Why stick to consoles, its considerably less true now, but plug a game in and it just fucking works is still valuable to me. PC doesn't even count, anybody who thinks they have hundreds of games spanning 40 years, obviously hasn't tried running very much. I've got tons of PC games, and most don't work on modern hardware. Wrong speed, video works but games don't. Game works but cut scenes crash it, etc. Sure if your stuck to the walled garden of steam or whatever, but how many are counting the repurchase of games they already had decades ago? Not to mention piracy, which is rampant. I got many games for c64, but I have a total of three that are legit copies.

edit)

Modern games?, yeah you can get some digital for cheaper than day one production run games, sure, but production run games have always dropped in price too, and that's not counting the used game market, where admittedly the days of getting a last year AAA title for a quarter is gone, but you can still often easily beat stores or digital for minimal effort

Edited December 31, 2023 by Video

[Metal Ghost]

On 12/27/2023 at 6:53 AM, Boschloo said:

I can't vote because the Dreamcast isn't on the poll. When it was discontinued, the games started selling for 99 cents at Kaybee and I ended up with over 150 titles. Then the consoles started going for $19.99 and I bought three spares. 

Man, I really wish I hadn’t been on a long gaming hiatus during this time. I was just out of college and totally in a good position to pick up closeouts like crazy. It just never even came across my radar though 😒

 

I kind of feel like those days are behind us now. Which is definitely a good thing for the industry. Closeouts, liquidations and fire sales are never good for the industry. But damn if I don’t love’em LOL. Closest I’ve gotten was clearing off the shelves of Toys R Us for the phase 3 Disney Infinity figurines (kind of a double whammy since I think it was not only when Disney Infinity was being discontinued but also when Toys R Us was closing).  Really happy I got those though….I still break them out periodically!

[Minuous]

This poll isn't very good, the four that I had the most carts for aren't even listed 😞

Edited January 4 by Minuous

[Hwlngmad]

At one point I had 80 games for the NES.  Once I got the Genesis and went away from the NES, my dad made me get rid of the games.  I was able to trade the 80 games for a TurboGrafx-16 with the CD-ROM add-on.  Best trade ever imo.

[Tanooki]

Depending on what NES games they were vs what the utterly awful rates are on TG anything that likely was then and now a good trade.

[Hwlngmad]

5 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Depending on what NES games they were vs what the utterly awful rates are on TG anything that likely was then and now a good trade.

It was a mix that featured some absolute classics with AVGN material trash.  But, seeing as how I was and would completely move onward from the NES (at that time) I thought it was an awesome trade that I still can't believe happened 'till this day.  I was one lucky kiddo for sure.