Wii-U thoughts so far

[ZenErik]

I'm curious as to what the numbers are NOT including bundled games. Either way, I am surprised!

[isiolia]

I pulled these numbers from Wikipedia, but I don't know the accuracy of them. Even doubling 360 numbers, Wii still comes out ahead.

Other sources I've seen online for more recent 360 numbers have sales about 100 million behind the Wii - though you still likely have XBL stuff that's not as accounted for.

As ZenErik indicated though, the Wii's numbers there are heavily padded by bundled games. The top 7 titles in the Wikipedia list were all at least available bundled, if not primarily sold that way. They account for about 245 million in sales. Granted, plenty of copies of NSMB or Mario Kart Wii were sold by themselves, but probably not too many copies of Wii Sports were.

There's not nearly as much in the PS3 or 360's top selling games lists that can be as directly attributed to hardware bundles. Except Kinect Adventures.

[MrPopo]

I pulled these numbers from Wikipedia, but I don't know the accuracy of them. Even doubling 360 numbers, Wii still comes out ahead.

Other sources I've seen online for more recent 360 numbers have sales about 100 million behind the Wii - though you still likely have XBL stuff that's not as accounted for.

As ZenErik indicated though, the Wii's numbers there are heavily padded by bundled games. The top 7 titles in the Wikipedia list were all at least available bundled, if not primarily sold that way. They account for about 245 million in sales. Granted, plenty of copies of NSMB or Mario Kart Wii were sold by themselves, but probably not too many copies of Wii Sports were.

There's not nearly as much in the PS3 or 360's top selling games lists that can be as directly attributed to hardware bundles. Except Kinect Adventures.

There's an upper limit on the bundled sales, though. If we assume that every Wii sku had at most one bundled game then you can't have more games sold due to being bundled than the console lifetime sales, and I know that not all skus come with a game.

[isiolia]

There's an upper limit on the bundled sales, though. If we assume that every Wii sku had at most one bundled game then you can't have more games sold due to being bundled than the console lifetime sales, and I know that not all skus come with a game.

True, but not all of them are bundled with a console either. Wii Play was bundled with a Wiimote. Wii Sports Resort was bundled with a Wii Motion Plus. Wii Fit with the balance board, and so on.

Point is more that if you look down the list of best-selling Wii games, you've got the top seven that all have 20+ million sold, with Wii Sports close to 82 million. All bundled with something at some point or another.
Then number eight on the list, Brawl, is a little shy of 11 million. Super Mario Galaxy, sold nearly as well. Not bundled.

10+ million is still great numbers. Better than any single PS3 game. Only what, Black Ops 2 on the 360 if you set aside Kinect Adventures.

Obviously, at least some Wii owners were buying first-party games, but there's definitely a sharp jump up for bundled games that the 360 only has with one title, and the PS3 doesn't have at all.

[ZenErik]

I guess my suggestion isn't very easy to calculate. And as far as bundle games, the PS3 definitely has them. I've gotten a PS3 that came with MGS4 and a PS3 that came with Assassin's Creed 3.

Anyway, no matter what sort of calculations we make, each and every console is wonderful in its own way.

[isiolia]

I guess my suggestion isn't very easy to calculate. And as far as bundle games, the PS3 definitely has them. I've gotten a PS3 that came with MGS4 and a PS3 that came with Assassin's Creed 3.

I didn't mean to imply that the 360 and PS3 never got bundled games. More that, with the exception of Kinect Adventures, their best-sellers lists don't exhibit the same kind of massive numbers corresponding to them like the Wii's does.

[Cronozilla]

A quick check on some dates and figures from Wikipedia, you can get a rough idea of how many non-bundles Wii Sports numbers there are.

If you assume every Wii bundle had Wii Sports in it until the black Wii hit (when it wasn't included in any bundle anymore, almost), which isn't entirely accurate (it's actually maximizing the bundle number) and you subtract Japanese sales (was never bundled in Japan) you get almost 5 Million of Wii Sports numbers to be unbundled units (Minus the year or so it was bundled again with Wii Sports Resort). Meaning it still would have been in the top 15-20 selling Wii games ... and that assuming no one who got it bundled would have bought it unbundled, which is really inaccurate.

Likewise, New Super Mario Bros. Wii was only bundled for about a year, so the maximum of units that could have been sold from that is like 13.45 million, the game sold almost 30 million. So that would mean something like at least 14.5 million units were bought outside of a bundle of any kind. Putting it in the top 7 selling games for the system.

I would argue, actually, that bundling Wii Sports is what made the Wii get those numbers in the first place ... not the other way around. Usually bundled game sales are inflated because of attachment rates ... but there's some instances where I think it's the other way around. I would argue the Super Mario Bros. bundle with the NES is a similar deal.

[fastbilly1]

Though this may not be appropriate to the conversation directly, since I figure yall are talking about US sales numbers and not global. But Wii Sports was not a bundle game in Japan at launch. I believe it was not bundled until about halfway through they consoles life.

[o.pwuaioc]

I pulled these numbers from Wikipedia, but I don't know the accuracy of them. Even doubling 360 numbers, Wii still comes out ahead.

Other sources I've seen online for more recent 360 numbers have sales about 100 million behind the Wii - though you still likely have XBL stuff that's not as accounted for.

You also have PSN and Wiiware/Virtual Console numbers that weren't mentioned either.

Though this may not be appropriate to the conversation directly, since I figure yall are talking about US sales numbers and not global. But Wii Sports was not a bundle game in Japan at launch. I believe it was not bundled until about halfway through they consoles life.

AFAIK, these are global numbers.

[Cronozilla]

Most of the sales numbers for games is only global on Wikipedia, sadly. I attempted to account for the non-bundled copies from Japan in the rough check I did, though.