James Delahunty
8 Nov 2008 0:09
According to Gamasutra, Microsoft's Xbox 360 currently has a higher attach rate (tie rate, attachment rate etc.) than the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles. This metric measures, on average, the number of games sold per console. It's obviously flawed for several reasons, for example because it means a boost in hardware sales could mean a lower tie rate for a period of time (and a boost in hardware sales is hardly a bad thing?)
Nevertheless, it is used in the industry as a measure of a console's performance in the market overall. More interesting than the overall tie rate is the difference specifically in the sales of first and third-party games. Nintendo, for example, is expected to have a higher tie rate for 1st party games compared to the Xbox 360 and PS3.
Overall, the PS3 console has an attach rate of 5.3, the Nintendo Wii has an attach rate of 5.5 and the Xbox 360's rate stands at 6.6. For third party titles, the Xbox 360's attach rate is 5.2, compared to the PS3's 4.4 and Wii's 3.1. As for first-party software, the Wii console has a tie rate of 2.4, compared to Xbox 360's 1.4 and PS3's 0.9.
The higher rate for first-party titles for the Wii is hardly surprising. Often cross-platform titles don't debut on the Wii console because of the hardware limitations, but both the Microsoft and Sony consoles are free to fight over sales of a lot of the same game titles.