NY Times Says Wii Game Sales are Weak

An article in yesterday's New York Times reveals the shocking truth that the Wii is suffering from poor sales... of software that is. Except software on the Wii is selling spectacularly and the article stretches the truth past the breaking point to come up with a conclusion that is not supported by the numbers or the reality of the current game market.

Their first data point to support this claim is that sales of Super Smash Bros. Brawl (the Wii's biggest hit not named Wii Play) have dropped off considerably since it was first released. They go on to say that online retailers have begun bundling the game with the Wii system out of desperation because it won't sell. Needless to say, both of these claims are ridiculous. SSBB sold more that 2.7 million copies in the US in April 2008, meaning more than a quarter of all Wii owners in America now own the game. Of course sales will drop off after that kind of a sales rush. They have no place to go but down. And forced bundling of the Wii system and at least one game in online sales has been going on since the Wii was launched in November 2006. It's not desperation, it's a retailer trying to squeeze more money out of an item that is guaranteed to sell out as soon as it arrives.

The article goes on to cite incorrect sales data as an explanation for the Wii's woes, which I will go into at the "Read Full Post" link.

The article then goes on to cite NPD sales data (after using VG Chartz sales data in the beginning of the article) to show that only three Wii titles have been in the list of top ten bestselling games for the first three months of the year. This is all well and good, but actually, four Wii titles have been listed in the NPD top ten for the first three months of the year (the author omitted SSBB, which incidentally is the bestselling game of the year across all systems). The fact that the PS3 has actually only had three games in the NPD top ten in 2008 (and none with the kind of sales SSBB has had) was not mentioned.

In the same paragraph the author would go on to compare the sales of Guitar Hero III on the Wii to the sales of the game on the Xbox 360 and PS3 to show the Wii lagging behind yet again. But this is actually not the case at all. The only way the author could get the numbers he was looking for was to combine the sales of Guitar Hero III on the PS2 and PS3 to push it past the Wii. In reality, the game has sold more than twice as many copies on the Wii as it has sold on the PS3 (per VG Chartz). Sales of the game on the Xbox 360 and Wii are almost neck and neck.

Finally, the author quotes Wedbush Morgan video game analyst, Michael Pachter. Pachter is legendary among game players for his ability to just not get it when it comes to anything game related and he continues that streak with his quote in this article:

"The average Wii owner buys only 3.7 games a year, compared with 4.7 for Xbox 360 owners and 4.6 for PlayStation 3 owners. It reflects the broadening of the demographic. Nintendo’s market doesn’t feel the same sense of urgency to buy every game that’s coming out."

Sounds bad for the Wii right? Wrong.

Looking at hardware sales, the Wii has outsold the PS3 10 million to 4 million (again, per VG Chartz) and is only slightly trailing the Xbox 360 (which has sold 11 million) even though it was released a year later. A little quick and dirty math shows that if those game buying numbers hold, 37 million games will be sold for the Wii in 2008 while only 18.8 million games will be sold for the PS3. The Xbox 360 is, of course, in a class by itself when it comes to game sales.

If anything, these numbers show that the PS3 is the system that is suffering from weak game sales, not the Wii. The idea that games don't sell on the Wii is one that has been pushed by news outlets (and fanboys of all stripes) since the system launched in 2006, but it just doesn't have any basis in reality, as these numbers attest to.