At 11.50 this morning, we received a press release from ELSPA, which contained the details of the annual sales figures for the games industry. For the traditional gamer, the figures are quite worrying. There were a total of 20.1 million games sold for the Wii in 2008, up a whopping 153% from 2007. That is way ahead of the Xbox 360, which sold 14.9 million units and the PS3 which came in at only 10.4 million units. On the bright side for the PS3 though, this was over double last year’s figure.
The Wii’s revolution dosen’t end there though, with the Wii taking 13.4% of all console usage of 2008, according to Nielsen.com. This was behind the Xbox 360 however, which took 17.2% of all console usage. Both were far behind not the PS3, but the PS2, which had 31.7% of all usage minutes! The PS3 itself had an embarrassing 7.3% behind even the original Xbox, over 2% higher.
We are seeing more than ever that people who wouldn’t have gone near a console previsouly are buying the Wii, and as a result Wii games are dominating the games chart. Mario Kart, Wii Play, Wii Fit, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games are all regulars inside the top twenty, and in July six of the top ten games were Wii games, and some, such as Big Beach Sports are just awful. Big Beach Sports has a Metacritic score of just 44.
At the same time as pretty dire ‘family games’ are selling like hot cakes, brilliant games such as LittleBigPlanet, Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space have all failed to sell nearly as well as expected. Why? A number of factors, but publishers, such as EA (who published Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge) may well be inclined to avoid the brilliant new IPs and head for more ‘family games’. Are we seeing this? Well, kinda. Looking at EA’s current line up for 2009, it includes, amongst others, Brain Training For Dummies, Hasbro Family Game Night, MySims Party, MySims Racing, Littlest Pet Shop Spring, SimAnimals and Trivial Pursuit.
Houston, Wii have a problem.
EDITOR’S NOTE: this was intended to stir up some discussion, please only comment with something meaningful below
