Poking holes in the New York Times's claims
Refuting perceived negative statements against your console of choice is usually a very petty, fanboy kind of thing to do, but the New York Times' recent coverage of the Wii's terrible attach rate deserves it. The article has some problems that make the Wii seem to be in a worse situation than it is, though we don't know whether it's an intentional angle or a bit of haphazard reporting. John Scalzo of the Video Game Librarian blog identified some of the issues.
Scalzo identifies the paper's dependence on numbers from VGChartz (a "a team of analysts who study video-game sales"), their claim that Smash Bros. sales have tanked, and their spurious analysis of Guitar Hero III sales as noticeable problems with the coverage. The last is especially startling: the NYT claims that "Guitar Hero, for example, sold 2.2 million copies for the Wii, but 2.8 million copies for the Xbox 360 and almost 5 million for two versions of the PlayStation," bringing in the PS2 to make its point. "The only way the author could get the numbers he was looking for," Scalzo said, "was to combine the sales of Guitar Hero III on the PS2 and PS3 to push it past the Wii."
Hit the break for some of our own thoughts on the article.
The first: the article identifies Brawl's sales dropoff after the first month as if it were symptomatic of the Wii's software issues: "Some major retail chains - including Wal-Mart and Toys "R" Us - have already begun bundling the Smash Bros. game with Wii machines for sales online, a sign that the base of hard-core gamers who went looking for the game has been depleted." Never mind that every game's sales drop off after launch, unless it suddenly attracts mainstream attention or is a controller. And never mind that all online retailers have bundled games with their few Wii consoles since launch.
The idea that a bundled game might be indication of attempting to expand a game's audience past a sated core is relatively sound, except in the case of the Wii. The Wii's supply has been so constrained that there are plenty of huge Nintendo fans who have been trying for a year or so to get a Wii, just to play this game.
Also flawed: the point that a few critically acclaimed titles failed to sell in large numbers. The NYT claims that this is evidence that the Wii audience doesn't want new games. But good games fail to sell all the time, on every console. It just means that most people's taste isn't as awesome and correct as ours.
The big proof that the Wii is failing to sell games is Michael Pachter's calculated rate of purchased games per year. Wii owners purchase 3.7 games a year versus the 360's 4.7 and the PS3's 4.6. Thus the other systems have better games and owners more willing to buy games, right? Right? Take that, Wii! Oh, except the Wii comes with a game that almost all Wii owners want. 360 software sales are indeed really great, but that doesn't mean the Wii is faring poorly.
