Posted on Thursday, May 01 2008 @ 8:26 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
A new report from Wedbush Morgan
indicates owners of Nintendo Wii consoles buy a lot less games than owners of PS3 or Xbox 360 consoles. Wii owners buy 3.7 games per year, which is a bit less than the 4.7 games Xbox 360 gamers buy and the 4.6 games bought by PS3 gamers.
Indeed, it seems that many Wii owners - both from statistical and anecdotal evidence - play the Wii Sports game that comes in the box and nothing else.
Hardcore gamers buy more games because they spend more time playing games, obviously. The downside of casual gamers is that they are just that - and given that a large chunk of any console manufacturer's revenue comes from games licensing deals rather than the hardware itself, that's going to mean a shrinking stream of dosh for Nintendo from games companies.
The number of games bought per console - known as 'attach rate' in the industry - has disappointed industry insiders, who previously thought Wii was lined up to be the gaming industries saviour. Top Nintendo titles have been mega sellers for one week of chart sales, before swiftly dropping off as the fanbase for excited gamers is exhausted.
If the Wii has predictably the lowest attach rate, then perhaps it is equally obvious that the Xbox 360 has the highest. Of the two 'hardcore gamer' platforms, the 360 is not only the cheapest in terms of hardware - thus leaving gamers with more cash to purchase software titles - individual games are priced up to £10 cheaper than their PS3 equivalent in high street stores, as retailers gouge PS3 owners for every penny of the many they clearly have.
