Nintendo systems tie ratio

[samsonlonghair]

Statistics without perspective are basically worthless.

Attach rate
An attach rate expresses approximately how many owners of a system also own another item for that system, such as a software title or an accessory. The attach rate for a software title, for example, is computed by dividing the total number of units of that software title sold by the size of the installed base for the system on which the software runs.
For example, if a game for the Nintendo Wii has sold 1 million units at the time when the installed base for the Wii is 10 million units, then the attach rate is said to be 10% (i.e. 1 million software units among 10 million hardware units).

An attach rate is often confused with a tie ratio. A general rule of thumb is the following: systems have tie ratios while software titles and accessories have attach rates. More importantly, an attach rate is a number between 0.0 and 1.00 (interpreted as a percentage) while a tie ratio is a number greater than 1.00.

Another example: Grand Theft Auto IV on the Xbox 360 version has sold 3,362,196 units as of April 2009 in the U.S., compared to 1,959,798 units for PlayStation 3. However, because X360 has a higher install base, GTAIV only has a 23% attach rate compared to 26.9% for the PS3 SKU (i.e., 26.9% of PS3 owners and 23% of X360 owners purchased the title). In brief, a console has a tie ratio while a game (or accessory) has an attach rate.

Source

[BoringSupreez]

Source?

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/sales/h ... index.html


I never touched a portable system I was 16, so I didn't know there were so many people who bought Gameboys for Pokemon alone. I guess that makes sense.

[samsonlonghair]

Thanks for adding that source, OP. I think the data we're seeing is the tie ratio, not the attach rate. I'm surprised that the tie ratio is so low. Why does the average consumer buy fewer than ten games for his/her console?

Sure, I love Tetris, but it's only one among dozens of compelling games for Gameboy.

[Ack]

So, if I'm reading this right, then for every 1 million Super Nintendos sold, roughly 8.1 million Super Nintendo games were sold?

[SNESdrunk]

Thanks for adding that source, OP. I think the data we're seeing is the tie ratio, not the attach rate. I'm surprised that the tie ratio is so low. Why does the average consumer buy fewer than ten games for his/her console?

Sure, I love Tetris, but it's only one among dozens of compelling games for Gameboy.

In my experience as a kid, I remember a lot of adults having a Gameboy with two or three games at most. I remember my friend's dad had one with just Tetris and Golf because "I don't need any other games."

[samsonlonghair]

So, if I'm reading this right, then for every 1 million Super Nintendos sold, roughly 8.1 million Super Nintendo games were sold?

Funny, that's not the figure I get. According to the source, SNES/Super Famicom sold 49.10 million hardware units worldwide and 379.06 million software units worldwide. I'm not even going to pretend I did the math in my head. I ran calc.exe; I divided 379.06/49.10 and got 7.72.

With an attach rate of 7.72 we can reasonably figure that for every million SNES sold worldwide, there were about 7.72 million cartridges sold worldwide (not counting pack-in cartridges like Super Mario Word).

Does that figure make sense to you? Feel free to double-check my math. I have been known to make mistakes in my arithmetic before.

[BoringSupreez]

So, if I'm reading this right, then for every 1 million Super Nintendos sold, roughly 8.1 million Super Nintendo games were sold?

Funny, that's not the figure I get. According to the source, SNES/Super Famicom sold 49.10 million hardware units worldwide and 379.06 million software unitsworldwide. I'm not even going to pretend I did the math in my head. I ran calc.exe; I divided 379.06/49.10 and got 7.72.

With an attach rate of 7.72 we can reasonably figure that for every million SNES sold worldwide, there were about 7.72 million cartridges sold worldwide (not counting pack-in cartridges like Super Mario Word).

Does that figure make sense to you? Feel free to double-check my math. I have been known to make mistakes in my arithmetic before.

I reversed the NES and SNES tie ratios.

However, yes, that means that for every SNES there were 7.7 games sold. Though you may as well subtract 1 (if you're looking to see how many games the average owner sought out on his own) since the SNES came with a pack in title for nearly its entire time on the market AFAIK. Same goes for the NES and Wii.

[Ack]

However, yes, that means that for every SNES there were 7.7 games sold. Though you may as well subtract 1 (if you're looking to see how many games the average owner sought out on his own) since the SNES came with a pack in title for nearly its entire time on the market AFAIK. Same goes for the NES and Wii.

Admittedly though, while combing through Nintendo's records before I've found places where they omitted software, so it could be the numbers are still accurate. After all, they would likely not have included speciality carts, such as DKC Competition, and we've no way of knowing how they tracked things like sales of the Super Scope and its pack-in. And if they use the same data that they use to track SNES games released, then I can confirm that a few games are missing from that data, such as the SNES port of Frogger.

[ZeroAX]

I'm more curious why the N64 tie ratio is so low. There weren't that many great games on it, but if you liked Nintendo's / Rare's games, you were probably going to buy as many of them as you can.

[samsonlonghair]

Probably because N64 cartridges were significantly more expensive than PS1 or Saturn discs.