Wii Claims Sales Record for Software Sold in First 18 Months
By Chris on Sunday, May 25th, 2008 at 6:09 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Games Industry, Nintendo, Nintendo
You might not have guessed it, but according to Nintendo, more software has been sold for the Wii in its first 18 months of availability than any other console — including the PlayStation 2.
In the Wii’s first 18 months, roughly 50 million games were sold, compared with the PS2’s 42 million, the Xbox 360’s 30 million, the Xbox’s 28 million, and 20 million for the PlayStation 3. That’s a pretty sizable margin for the Wii, and keep in mind that these figures do not include Virtual Console sales or Wii Sports, according to Kotaku.
Nintendo of America’s executive VP of sales and marketing, Cammie Dunaway, revealed the figures at this week’s Electronic Gaming Summit. She pointed out that Nintendo was unable to meet demand in any month since the system was released, and added, “While we appreciate the impact the PlayStation 2 had on sales and the industry, perhaps we are even more impactful.” Zing!
There’s no denying that the Wii has been extremely dominant since it was released. The main issue will be how much longer can Nintendo sustain this dominance. At this point, I don’t see any reason to believe the demand is ready to subside.
To be cynical for a moment, the one thing I can think of that detracts from this would be the absurd bundles that people have been forced into purchasing in order to simply get a Wii. I wonder how much of an impact that had on these numbers.
It would actually be pretty bad if this weren’t the case because there are a damn sight more Wiis after 18 months than there were of any of the other consoles.
I think all the consoles have seen a lot of forced bundling. In particular, look at the 360, I’ve seen huge amounts of consoles being sold with Marvel Ultimate alliance and Forza 2. No one ever mentions these bundles when they start talking about 360 software attach rates. Why? Because bundling doesn’t really change much. If the hardware comes with games, the purchaser is less likely to buy stand alone software. I’ve said this before but the inclusion of Wii sports actually HURTS software sales. I can guarantee you that many Wii purchasers would buy 1-2 games with the Wii if it didn’t come with wii sports, but since it does, and its such a great game for first time Wii buyers, they likely don’t need to buy anything else for quite some time. You hear people say that casuals are buying the Wii and ONLY playing Wii sports, well, clearly if thats happening then the rest of us are buying lots of titles.