Will Wii games still be produced after the Wii U is released?

[kedawa]

It proves that Wii owners aren't buying many games, which makes supporting the platform less attractive.

[Leo_A]

It proves that Wii owners aren't buying many games, which makes supporting the platform less attractive.

If consumers were buying too few games you'd of seen its effects much earlier. The Wii has been heavily supported by many publishers, particularly the kind that aren't going to jump ship day 1 to the latest and greatest platform (The shovelware producers). So I would think at the very least it has enjoyed a halfway decent attach rate.

But that's besides the point, attach rate simply can't reveal that software sales are in decline like he was suggesting. It's a metric that measures how many games, on average, that a console buyer has bought. It can't tell you that in 2012, Wii software sales are so low that even shovelware publishers are jumping ship. Yet that's exactly what he was suggesting. At the most, a comparison could show that Xbox 360 and/or Playstation 3 owners have started to buy more games than the competition if you were to compare the current statistics with those from the past.

But that statistic alone can't ever tell you that Wii sales are in decline. It's simply total lifetime software sales divided by total console sales. Nothing more, nothing less.

Edit- And quickly searching for console attach rates 2011 in Google brought up an informative post from another message board from last May that suggests otherwise.

"695.37 million [Wii] games life to date divided by 86 million [Wii] systems sold is an attach rate of 8.6 games per [Wii] system.

XBOX 360 - MS is a little coy in their lifetime sales - they release lifetime systems and report an attach rate of 8.9 games - for the NPD - the US market! Lets remember the US is their stongest market, and their worldwide attach rate is lower - in fact, very likely lower than Wii! But even assuming that higher number for worldwide, that equates to 477 million game sold - just 68% of what Wii sold - ouch. And it has been on the market a year longer.....

PS3 Had sold 315 million games as of June 30th, 2010. They have sold about 50 million consoles as of today, so lets take 13 million of of that to give a solid estimate of their 2010 life to date hardware sales. That an attach rate of 8.2, but remember, it is a blu ray player after all..."

At the very least, the Wii is clearly competitive in regards to this particular statistic.

Anyways, this is pretty much pointless. I think there is consensus that releases of interest to the average DP user are virtually done. That the Wii may or may not see a few more years of shovelware releases is all but meaningless.

[DOAsaturn]

I think a good point has been raised that shovelware producers are really the last to go when it comes to game development. Oh, I miss the old days when the last games were actually some pretty decent stuff (Can't argue with the NES finishing up with Jungle Book and Wario's Woods and the Saturn had about 4-5 games that some consider the best in the console's history and Dreamcast had arguably the best hockey game of the time with NHL 2K2).

I've been following the 3DS obsessively. It's really dependent on your definition of shovelware, of course, but the shovelware "glut" really hasn't seem to get going until recently...it seems the regulars (i.e. Maximum Family, Storm City, Giant Media Group and of course the "life simulators" from THQ and others) are going to hit the 3DS scene hard in the next few months. Red Wagon Games and D3 have put a couple things out there, but true shovelware hasn't really infected the 3DS library until now. It's a tad sobering - I didn't really want to see the 3DS library go the same was as the DS's did... Anyway, my point is, it does take a year or two for these publishers to transition from one console to the next. For example, I highly doubt Maximum Family is prepping stuff for Wii U's launch...

[Bojay1997]

If consumers were buying too few games you'd of seen its effects much earlier. The Wii has been heavily supported by many publishers, particularly the kind that aren't going to jump ship day 1 to the latest and greatest platform (The shovelware producers). So I would think at the very least it has enjoyed a halfway decent attach rate.

But that's besides the point, attach rate simply can't reveal that software sales are in decline like he was suggesting. It's a metric that measures how many games, on average, that a console buyer has bought. It can't tell you that in 2012, Wii software sales are so low that even shovelware publishers are jumping ship. Yet that's exactly what he was suggesting. At the most, a comparison could show that Xbox 360 and/or Playstation 3 owners have started to buy more games than the competition.

But the statistic can't ever tell you that Wii sales are in decline.

Edit- And quickly searching for console attach rates 2011 in Google brought up an informative post from another message board from last May that suggests otherwise.

"695.37 million [Wii] games life to date divided by 86 million [Wii] systems sold is an attach rate of 8.6 games per [Wii] system.

XBOX 360 - MS is a little coy in their lifetime sales - they release lifetime systems and report an attach rate of 8.9 games - for the NPD - the US market! Lets remember the US is their stongest market, and their worldwide attach rate is lower - in fact, very likely lower than Wii! But even assuming that higher number for worldwide, that equates to 477 million game sold - just 68% of what Wii sold - ouch. And it has been on the market a year longer.....

PS3 Had sold 315 million games as of June 30th, 2010. They have sold about 50 million consoles as of today, so lets take 13 million of of that to give a solid estimate of their 2010 life to date hardware sales. That an attach rate of 8.2, but remember, it is a blu ray player after all..."

At the very least, the Wii is clearly competitive in regards to this particular statistic.

Anyways, this is pretty much pointless. I think there is consensus that releases of interest to the average DP user are virtually done. That the Wii may or may not see a few more years of shovelware releases is all but meaningless.

Actually, I collect the shovel ware on the Wii and it has slowed to almost nothing over the past year. Like I said, you can argue all you want about what publishers will or won't do, but it is very clear to me as a collector that they have already decided there isn't much of a Wii software market left. Heck, just walk into Best Buy or check Amazon for the past 90 days of releases and you'll see nothing has come out including during the all important holiday season. Nintendo will still sell millions of games like Mario Party 9 which just came out and I'm sure the Xseed and Gamestop published JRPGs will do ok with their niche markets, but beyond a few more releases between now and WiiU, the era of sustained software support for the Wii is largely over. I would also argue that many of the Wii console sales in the past few years have been replacement units or second units (that's also the case for the Xbox 360 and PS3 by the way) and those buyers already have access to the games and while they may be buying the Nintendo first party budget re-release games, they sure aren't going to be buying shovel ware or even most third party stuff. Only time will tell, but just having a large install base means very little if that base isn't willing to buy your products.