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With the Nintendo Channel giving out play time data, we can generate some (very rough) estimates for LTD virtual console sales for the North America region. There's lots of Mario on top, but what else? Bonus: Wiiware included!
Before we get to the chart, let me explain the numbers a little bit. All of these sales numbers are very rough estimates based off of data extracted from the Nintendo Channel, which gives raw numbers of people submitting data for the game in North America. This data sample is scaled up based on:
* Known global Virtual Console attach rates, adjusted upward slightly for higher North America sales
* Internet connectivity rate of the Wii, generally estimated to be about 50% (again it is highest in North America)
* Known data sample rate for the Nintendo Channel (6% of all Wii owners, obtained by examining data for Wii Sports and the Wii's included channels)
* Scaling factors for retail games for which sales numbers are known (generally as low as 3 for more "hardcore" games and as high as 16 for more "casual" games)
With over 10 million VC sales as of the end of 2007 (source ), the VC attach rate is about 0.51 worldwide, and assumed to be somewhat higher in North America, whose Wii owners shown a more traditional, hardcore taste than in other regions. Nintendo's latest financial report put the Wii's attach rate for disc games in North America at double the attach rate in Japan, so it is reasonable to assume a 0.6 attach rate for VC sales in North America as a conservative estimate. That would put total VC sales in North America at about 7.3 million currently. Since the data available in the Nintendo Channel shows 2 million data submissions, this would give an average scaling factor of 3.6; in other words, if you take the number of data submissions for a particular VC game, and multiply by 3.6, you would have a good approximation of its sales in North America.
If you take the data sample rate for the Nintendo Channel, and adjust it for the internet connectivity rate (since you can't buy VC games or submit data to the Nintendo Channel without hooking up to the internet), you would get a number of 12% for number of Wiis that have ever been connected to the internet that submitted their data. Inverting this number gives a maximum scaling factor of about 7.5 for VC titles, if we assume that the data sample in the Nintendo Channel scales evenly up to the entire userbase of internet-connected Wiis (it won't). The real scaling factor would almost certainly be less than this number, but it provides a good upper limit.
Comparing the data sample for each retail, disc title to its known retail sales will give a good scaling factor for each game, depending on how accurate the retail sales data is. Without going into all of the specifics, for certain high-volume titles where sales data is reasonably accurate the scaling factor goes as low as 4.14 for Metroid Prime 3 and as high as 15.2 for Wii Sports, with an average of about 9.4. Since retail titles can obviously be bought and played offline, while VC titles must be bought online, we can use the internet connectivity rate estimate again to get an average scaling factor of 4.7 for VC titles. In reality the scaling factor would probably not be lowered by the full 50%, since it is reasonable to assume that owners with internet-connected Wiis purchase/play more games than the ones not connected to the internet, but the VC is probably more hardcore-leaning than casual, which indicates a lower scaling factor than the average.
Putting together these three different (admittedly quite rough) estimates for the VC scaling factor, this chart uses a simple 4.0 scaling factor across the board as a simple, conservative figure. Obviously the scaling factor will in reality be different for each game (much like the retail titles), but the audience for the Virtual Console is not as diverse as for all Wii retail games in general, so there should not be as much variation. It is likely that the popular, already high-selling VC titles such as Super Mario Bros. will have a higher scaling factor than more niche, "hardcore" titles; however while that would change some of these rough numbers, it would not really alter the rankings or the overall trends observed here.
There are also some issues with the fact that the Nintendo Channel gives play data rather than sales data, leaving open the possibility that a game could be bought and not played, and thus not counted until later. However this is less of a risk for VC titles than for retail titles, as most users will play a VC game immediately after it is purchased and downloaded. Game rentals and used game purchases will have a similar affect, but again only for retail titles. These factors will, however, affect the way the VC scaling factor is derived from the retail scaling factors, but hopefully we have a good enough estimate here to make some qualitative assessments.
Scaling factors aside, the data provided in the Nintendo Channel is not entirely complete. Out of the 232 games available on the North American Virtual Console, only 213 are listed in the Nintendo Channel. Out of those, only 45 have data, though they appear to be the highest-selling titles. The assumption is that only titles that meet a certain threshold in amount of data submitted will have their data displayed, which would cut off the bottom 3/4 of the chart but not really affect the top titles. There may, however, be high-selling titles for which the publisher simply does not wish the data to be released, and there are 19 titles not even listed in the Nintendo Channel (though, again, all of the major ones are so these 19 probably do not affect the top 45). Overall there may be a few titles missing from the list that should be there, however the chart is probably fairly complete.
With those caveats out of the way, assuming anyone is actually still reading this and hasn't already skipped ahead, here is the chart for lifetime sales of Virtual Console titles in North America.
W/E 6/21 Platform Publisher Sales
1
Super Mario Bros.
NES
Nintendo
662,000
2
Super Mario Bros. 3
NES
Nintendo
618,000
3
Super Mario World
SNES
Nintendo
483,000
4
Mario Kart 64
N64
Nintendo
469,000
5
Super Mario 64
N64
Nintendo
423,000
6 Legend of Zelda, the NES Nintendo 323,000
7 Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the N64 Nintendo 310,000
8 Paper Mario N64 Nintendo 280,000
9 Kirby's Adventure NES Nintendo 271,000
10 Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the SNES Nintendo 263,000
11 Star Fox 64 N64 Nintendo 255,000
12 Super Mario Bros. 2 NES Nintendo 250,000
13 Punch Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream NES Nintendo 246,000
14 Donkey Kong Country SNES Nintendo 231,000
15 Super Metroid SNES Nintendo 211,000
16 Sonic the Hedgehog GEN Sega 180,000
17 SMB: The Lost Levels NES Nintendo 175,000
18 Pokemon Snap N64 Nintendo 160,000
19 Kid Icarus NES Nintendo 149,000
20 Gunstar Heroes GEN Sega 128,000
21 Metroid NES Nintendo 121,000
22 Bomberman '93 TG16 Hudson 120,000
23 Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards N64 Nintendo 115,000
24 Yoshi's Story N64 Nintendo 107,000
25 Super Castlevania IV SNES Konami 105,000
26 Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest SNES Nintendo 104,000
27 Sin & Punishment N64 Nintendo 102,000
28 Sonic the Hedgehog 2 GEN Sega 99,000
29 Zelda II: The Adventure of Link NES Nintendo 98,000
30 Street Fighter II: The World Warrior SNES Capcom 89,000
31 Contra III SNES Konami 87,000
32 Sonic the Hedgehog 3 GEN Sega 83,000
33 Galaga NES Namco Bandai 82,000
34 Tecmo Bowl NES Tecmo 76,000
35 Bubble Bobble NES Taito 74,000
36 Toe Jam & Earl GEN Sega 71,000
37 Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting SNES Capcom 69,000
38 SimCity SNES Nintendo 63,000
39 F-Zero X N64 Nintendo 59,000
40 Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble SNES Nintendo 49,000
41 Streets of Rage II GEN Sega 48,000
42 Harvest Moon SNES Natsume 45,000
43 Wario's Woods NES Nintendo 41,000
44 Breath of Fire II SNES Capcom 39,000
45 Shining Force GEN Sega 35,000
Unsurprisingly, there's lots of Mario on top, and lots of Nintendo everywhere. One interesting note is that despite pouring out 35 TurboGrafx16 titles, Hudson only has one that made the top 45.
Some bonus statistics not shown in the table:
* The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time saw the highest average playtime at 18 hours and 34 minutes per person, spread out over 10.46 sessions on average.
* Super Mario Bros., in addition to being the highest-selling title, is also the most often played at an average of 13.2 sessions per person, though each session lasted only an average of 25 minutes.
* Paper Mario kept gamers hooked the longest, with the average session lasting almost exactly two full hours.
As an extra for those who have actually made it this far, here's the top four Wiiware titles, scaled up in the same method (which is probably even less accurate for Wiiware but the data set is very limited right now). Only four out of the 16 Wiiware titles had data available, but these are generally considered to be the four most popular/best-selling titles.
W/E 6/21 Publisher Sales
1
Defend Your Castle
XGen Studios
114,000
2 Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King Square Enix 90,000
3 LostWinds Frontier 80,000
4 Dr. Mario Online Rx Nintendo 71,000
Cheapie Defend Your Castle tops the list, while Dr. Mario gets beat out by the three best launch titles, all third-party. Not much else to be said about this one.
We'll be refining the methods outlined here as time progresses and we get more information available. Let us know what you think in the comments!
- Keith Jackson |
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发表于 2008-6-26 01:05
发表于 2008-6-26 01:09
如果你给翻译过来，我可能还会同情同情你