While the site isn't exactly complete, I enjoy regularly just randomly searching through VG Chartz, which is perhaps the best free compendium of sales figures for the video game industry available. Sure, it has its issues at times, but overall it's a site I get endless entertainment from. Not only that, but flipping around it is rather edifying.
See, one thing I've heard plenty of late is that nobody in their right mind would want to develop for a Nintendo-based system because the sales charts for the system are completely dominated by first-party software. Because of that, you'll never be able to sell a game well on the Wii. Granted, this has mostly been coming from anti-Nintendo fanboys, but it's fueled by some developers grumbling about similar issues. I'll admit, it's no question that Nintendo moves a ton of games on their own systems. But how true is it that game sales are depressed on Nintendo systems due to first-party games?
So I decided to surf on through to VG Chartz and started doing some number comparisons. The first thing I noticed is that there is some legitimacy in saying that Nintendo first-party titles dominate the sales charts. In fact, if you want to talk about all-time game sales, Nintendo pretty much is the chart – Nintendo has literally published the top ten best-selling games of all-time, 16 of the top 20, and a remarkable 34 of the top 50 best-selling games of all time (36 if you only consider console games). Whatever else you can say about Nintendo, they are a company that knows how to get a game to sell.
Now, one might make follow this to the logical conclusion that as a consumer's buying power is limited, this proves the point against publishing a third-party game on a Nintendo system. But this fails to take into account that in general, the gaming market is quite fragmented. It's easy for gamers to forget that a game that might be well-known and popular in some circles isn't played at all in many others. The truth is, a game is only going to appeal to a percentage of any given console's install base. And that number is much smaller than many people would suspect.
Let's do a little exercise. Guess what is the third-party (as in, not published by the console manufacturer) game that reached the largest percentage of the install base for the console. I'll give the answer in the next paragraph, after I go over why this is important. See, if you can only reliably attract a certain percentage of a given market, it makes the most sense to go after the largest market. After all, getting one percent of the PlayStation 2's install base was better than five percent of the install base of either the GameCube or the Xbox.
Anyhow, the grand champion of reaching the largest install base is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which managed to be bought by 13% of PS2 owners worldwide. It barely beat out the Super Nintendo version of Street Fighter II (12.8%), but if we included SF2 Turbo and Super SF2, that would win out. But note that we're talking about insanely popular and industry-changing games to even sell that much. And to be honest, they're just as likely to be taking sales away from smaller games on platforms as first-party titles.
Moreover, there is some suggestion that the "Mario Effect" (to come up with a quick way of describing the effect a Nintendo-made game would have on third-party software sales) actually doesn't exist at all. One game where I can get solid sales numbers for each of its iterations is Resident Evil 4, which has appeared on the PS2, the GC, and the Wii. On the surface of it, the PS2 version did sell better overall – nearly a million more copies were sold for the PS2 than the GC version (and the Wii version has sold close to the same amount as the GC version). However, if you actually calculate it out, only 2.16% of PlayStation 2 owners bothered to pick up the game. Meanwhile, 7.69% of GC owners got the game. Even 7.31% of Wii owners got the game, and they could just as easily play the GC version as well (I know I didn't buy the Wii version with a perfectly fine GC version on my shelf). It really appears that Sony compensated for the low level of interest for a given game by increasing the market so much that even 1% of the install base was a guaranteed million-seller.
To some extent, I will admit that the GameCube was more likely to sell such a game as the PlayStation 2. After all, the PS2 was the system that more casual game owners were likely to own. We all know people who picked up the PS2 and only got one or two games with it. Heck, my mom did that. So yes, the GC was more likely to have the dedicated hardcore audience that would support a game like Resident Evil 4. But really, isn't that another argument in favor of the Wii? I did just describe the PS2 in the same terms as the Wii gets described now, for its sales. If the Wii is going to have the sales like the PS2 (which isn't outrageous), then you'd use the same logic for choosing it as you would for the PS2.
Now, this isn't to say that there aren't other reasons worth noting to develop for the other systems. Nintendo is famously difficult about approving games for release on their systems, although they've been apparently relaxing a bit of late. There's also issues that some are having programming for the Wii remote, and then there's the whole high-definition question. But first-party sales detracting from third-party sales? I don't believe it. The only things that really impacted GameCube game sales were a lower install base and lousy games that would have been lousy on any console. When a quality game appeared on the system, it sold well regardless of who made it (well, except for Gotcha Force – why was I the only one who played it when it first came out?). While I doubt this myth will go away, at least I can hope some people will see through it.
