Xbox 360 attach rate and the HD effect.

[inefficient]

wait... let me get this straight.

the reason that you think 360 owners are buying so many different games to enjoy on their system is due to the fact that there is a lack of games?

Maybe the lack of really good AAA games, forces you to buy 2 or more mediocre games to satisfy your gaming hunger.

EA's corporate strategy revealed!

 

[Rangers]

The guys on the 1up Yours podcast have discussed this alot and have to agree with their reasoning. The high attach rate is probably more simplified: lack of games. Take a look of the past year and you'll see that 360 owners gobbled up games from release date to release date. There was hardly anything for 360 owners to play the 1st 3 months or so of 2006. Plus, the fact of the lack of 1st party games in general. I agree HD, online support and achievements all have an effect on attach rate, but I think the strongest reason has been the lack of games itself.

Tommy McClain

This doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

How then would you explain the PS3 and Wii "record low" attach rates so far? They have even less games than 360!

I mean, I sort of get what you're saying, but I think your point (not that I agree with it) would be better explained that 360 was the only next gen game in town for the past year. So that created unusual hype or each big release on the system. Because really, for next gen there was nothing else, period.

Personally, I dont know. I think Xbox gamers are just a very hardcore, americanized, FPS, lovin', game buyin', group. Remember, it's only early 2nd gen for Xbox, so it's sort of still a new breed of gamer, who identify not with Sony or Nintendo but with Microsoft.

 

[wazoo]

Maybe the lack of really good AAA games, forces you to buy 2 or more mediocre games to satisfy your gaming hunger.

EA's corporate strategy revealed!

That is what happened with the N64, where we bought anything Nintendo and pretty much all 2nd parties.

 

[scooby_dooby]

this is MSs number one problem with the xb360 the punters are not buying it for some reason

Hmm wonder what that would be....$400 pricetag maybe? Obviously?

 

[scooby_dooby]

Xbox 360 attach rate and the HD effect.

The attach rate for the xbox 360 has been remarkably high. Are the games that compelling, or do you think that it could be a result of owners looking to put their HDTV's to good use.

To elaborate, as a recent recent participant to the world of HDTV, I find my viewing habits heavily influenced by the availability of programming in HDTV. If two shows are on simultaneously, one in SD and one in HD, even if I have a reasonable preference for the SD one, I find myself choosing to watch the one in HD. I understand the novelty of the newness to HDTV for me, but the image quality really does make it more enjoyable. I have noticed this with my daughter and son as well. They have Discovery HD on all the time now. HD has made watching TV more enjoyable for me. Do you think that this 'HD effect' could also explain the high attachment rate for the 360? Seeing that HD programming is limited, could the high attachment rate be a result of 360 users looking for material to utilize their HD displays.



NB. I will leave the PS3 out of the discussion as it is in its infancy, but I expect the same for it.

I believe you're basically bang on, the idea that it due to lack of good games ir ridiculous, it's actually the opposite.

It's a combination of
A) The HD effect you described. People are seeing their HD's in action, have never seen GFX like this before, and they are gobbling it up.
and
B) One of the best first year lineups ever. With games like GOW, FN3, Oblivion, Dead Rising, Rainbow 6 Vegas, GRAW, Viva Pinata, Kameo, COD2, Condemned and the list goes on, all in year 1, it's no wonder people are buying alot of titles.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Honestly, I think the 360's attach rate is so high because it hasn't sold very well to the more casual segment of the market. It's not a well established brand like Nintendo or Playstation, so you're looking at consumers who do buy being better informed in general. They're also more likely to be "hardcore" gamers who buy more games than most people. They're also more likely to buy than rent. MS's biggest challenge is to break out of this niche to garner a wider audience. There are a lot of people out there who only buy one or two games a year and Microsoft isn't reaching them. That may or may not be a problem in the long run. But they probably won't ever produce PS1/PS2 scale numbers without reaching them. MS talked a lot about reaching a Billion gamers this generation, and the Xbox Live Marketplace games are supposed to be custom designed for these more casual players, but judging by the attach rate, they're just not getting that kind of mind share and patronage.

 

[quest55720]

Honestly, I think the 360's attach rate is so high because it hasn't sold very well to the more casual segment of the market. It's not a well established brand like Nintendo or Playstation, so you're looking at consumers who do buy being better informed in general. They're also more likely to be "hardcore" gamers who buy more games than most people. They're also more likely to buy than rent. MS's biggest challenge is to break out of this niche to garner a wider audience. There are a lot of people out there who only buy one or two games a year and Microsoft isn't reaching them. That may or may not be a problem in the long run. But they probably won't ever produce PS1/PS2 scale numbers without reaching them. MS talked a lot about reaching a Billion gamers this generation, and the Xbox Live Marketplace games are supposed to be custom designed for these more casual players, but judging by the attach rate, they're just not getting that kind of mind share and patronage.

Sure the systems has a large portion of hardcore gamers but so does every system launch. The 360 attach rate is very very high for 1 year in. Not many people who are not hard core are going to spend 400+ dollars on a gaming machine. I am willing to bet neither the wii or PS3 will have an attach rate near 6 come decemeber 2007.

I would say the reason for the high attach rate is the 360 owners have lots of diposible income and the game selection has been outstanding for 1 year in. There might of not been the AAA type titles there were a lot of damn good games like GRAW,GoW,FNr3,Kameo,elder scrolls, dead rising the new year of sports games ect. Add in the achievement system and it really gets alot of people who are on the fence about a game to buy it. Only the dreamcast had a better first year IMO for games but that is not a real fair comparision since the DC launch a year earlier in japan.

 

[inefficient]

That is what happened with the N64, where we bought anything Nintendo and pretty much all 2nd parties.

Ya, I remember buying utter garbage like Forsaken and Aero Fighters Assault for my N64 just to have something to play on it while waiting for Zelda64 to come out.

 

[Gubbi]

With games like GOW, FN3, Oblivion, Dead Rising, Rainbow 6 Vegas, GRAW, Viva Pinata, Kameo, COD2, Condemned and the list goes on, all in year 1, it's no wonder people are buying alot of titles.

+COD3

I think it's primarily two reasons: 1.) Early adopters are more likely to buy more games than casual gamers, casual gamers still buy PS2s. 2.) Plenty of good games. Launch was decent, and it's gotten a lot better since then.

To keep the ball rolling and getting causal gamers on board, MS needs to stay ahead with the game lineup and with price.

Cheers

 

[Geo]

If two shows are on simultaneously, one in SD and one in HD, even if I have a reasonable preference for the SD one, I find myself choosing to watch the one in HD. I understand the novelty of the newness to HDTV for me, but the image quality really does make it more enjoyable.

No, that doesn't go away. We've had HD tv's for four years now (on our third). That doesn't go away. G'bless TNT HD and ESPN HD. :smile:

 

[London Geezer]

I can only speak of the UK, and here it is a very VERY good thing that LCD TVs seem to have become a commodity and a "cool" thing to own. Surely helped by ridiculous price cuts. All these LCD TVs are sold as HD-Ready, which means that eventually, when HD programming becomes more widespread, we will also be in the same position of the US - in the meantime, at least people have HD TVs at home, even if i believe most of them think that watching DVDs on them is "HD". Bless 'em...

 

[Dave Baumann]

I can only speak of the UK, and here it is a very VERY good thing that LCD TVs seem to have become a commodity and a "cool" thing to own. Surely helped by ridiculous price cuts. All these LCD TVs are sold as HD-Ready, which means that eventually, when HD programming becomes more widespread, we will also be in the same position of the US - in the meantime, at least people have HD TVs at home, even if i believe most of them think that watching DVDs on them is "HD". Bless 'em...

I would say that this is simply the case of the UK following (although benefitting) what is occuring in the rest of the world. For instance, with HD programming ramping up quite well and HD capable sets being mandated in the US the cost for manufacturing HD sets are coming down significantly becauser now that were there larger parts of the market is demanding. Given that flat panels are more astetically pleasing as well, its not really a surpise that they are taking over.

 

[London Geezer]

I would say that this is simply the case of the UK following (although benefitting) what is occuring in the rest of the world. For instance, with HD programming ramping up quite well and HD capable sets being mandated in the US the cost for manufacturing HD sets are coming down significantly becauser now that were there larger parts of the market is demanding. Given that flat panels are more astetically pleasing as well, its not really a surpise that they are taking over.

Absolutely, i think my main point is that it's good that people have LCD TVs at home, bought just because they "look cool", without knowing anything about HD - apart from what they read on Currys leaflets. So, there is lots of time to "educate them" and eventually they will get it, and the goof thing is that they will already have HDTVs at home ready to be used when they finally get HD programming - probably when Freeview switches to HD, as SkyHD is still very much an elite kind of service.

 

[AzBat]

Maybe the lack of really good AAA games, forces you to buy 2 or more mediocre games to satisfy your gaming hunger.

EA's corporate strategy revealed!

This is my point. The really good AAA games didn't happen till late in the year. In the beginning of the year new releases were few and far between. Those early owners are the ones who are contributing to the high attach rate. Not the owners who bought after August or September. They had to agonize through periods of drought(spring and summer) of very little games to play. And the games they did get weren't great ones. Look at the sales figures for Xbox 360 games as the year progresses. You can definitely see a trend where basically 360 owners went from title to title as the year progressed. I mean, who would have expected Dead Rising to do the numbers they did?

Anyway, I expect 360's attach rate to decline, but we probably won't notice it right away. Might take 2 or 3 months for a drop to a 4.

BTW, how do I explain the low PS3 and Wii numbers? Same way we explained the 360 numbers last year: launch system. The majority of the people buying at launch are either not buying a game(to sell on eBay) or just buying one game.

Tommy McClain

 

[AzBat]

Honestly, I think the 360's attach rate is so high because it hasn't sold very well to the more casual segment of the market. It's not a well established brand like Nintendo or Playstation, so you're looking at consumers who do buy being better informed in general. They're also more likely to be "hardcore" gamers who buy more games than most people.

Exactly. A better explanation for my "early owners contributing to high attach rate". The reason why early owners are so hungry for games and going from release to release is that they are hardcore gamers, not normal ones. I still believe that in the first 7-8 months of the year that lack of titles contributed to owners going from release to release.

They're also more likely to buy than rent. MS's biggest challenge is to break out of this niche to garner a wider audience. There are a lot of people out there who only buy one or two games a year and Microsoft isn't reaching them. That may or may not be a problem in the long run. But they probably won't ever produce PS1/PS2 scale numbers without reaching them. MS talked a lot about reaching a Billion gamers this generation, and the Xbox Live Marketplace games are supposed to be custom designed for these more casual players, but judging by the attach rate, they're just not getting that kind of mind share and patronage.

Agreed. Until Microsoft brings the price down the attach rates will be high. What would you rather have: 8M at an attach rate of 5 OR 25M at an attach rate of 2 or 3?

Tommy McClain

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

Holy Cow. Are we all still hating MS so much that any positive news that happens we have to try and spin it to be negative?

First.. just compare the 360 attach rate after 1 year to ANY OTHER console attach rate after 1 year.

Second.. compare the games available for the 360 after 1 year to ANY OTHER console after 1 year.

The attach rate is higher because the games available are vastly superior.

AzBat: On one hand, you claim that 360 owners are buying X number of games because it only takes them 2 weeks to "beat", so they need another one. On the other hand, you claim that there's no AAA title on the 360, so people have to buy a bunch of mediocre games in order to "fill the space".

Are you under the impression that if there was, in your mind, a AAA 360 title that people would buy less games because they would spend so much time playing that single game they wouldn't have enough time to play others?

The lineup for the 360 has been incredible. I'm actually worried that by the time I get around to buying a 360, the generation will have advanced so far that I won't be able to enjoy Dead Rising, Condemned, GRAW, Oblivion, etc... the way the early adopters did.

 

[nelg]

BTW, how do I explain the low PS3 and Wii numbers? Same way we explained the 360 numbers last year: launch system. The majority of the people buying at launch are either not buying a game(to sell on eBay) or just buying one game.

Tommy McClain

Seeing that these consoles would be resold within a short period of time, can that really be a factor? Add to that, the ones buying and paying a premium for them, I would assume to be more inclined to be hard core gamers and or have more disposable income to buy games.

 

[Rolf N]

What would you rather have: 8M at an attach rate of 5 OR 25M at an attach rate of 2 or 3?

As a publisher: the latter.
As a platform holder where the console price is at break-even or profitable: the latter.
As a platform holder who loses a significant amount of money on every unit: the former.

 

[Geo]

I'm a fan of it being a pricing phenomenon. I.E. this gen having higher price points means that early adopters are higher income levels, on average, and therefore can afford to buy more games. And by that theory, I would expect PS3's attach rate to look pretty good this time next year as well.

 

[AzBat]

Holy Cow. Are we all still hating MS so much that any positive news that happens we have to try and spin it to be negative?

I hope you don't think I'm pissing in Microsoft's Cheerios. I'm more of a Microsoft poster child than anything.

First.. just compare the 360 attach rate after 1 year to ANY OTHER console attach rate after 1 year.

Second.. compare the games available for the 360 after 1 year to ANY OTHER console after 1 year.

The attach rate is higher because the games available are vastly superior.

I don't know about that. I guess it's a subjective thing.

AzBat: On one hand, you claim that 360 owners are buying X number of games because it only takes them 2 weeks to "beat", so they need another one. On the other hand, you claim that there's no AAA title on the 360, so people have to buy a bunch of mediocre games in order to "fill the space".

Yes.

Are you under the impression that if there was, in your mind, a AAA 360 title that people would buy less games because they would spend so much time playing that single game they wouldn't have enough time to play others?

Yes, why not? I played Halo and Halo 2 constantly for months. I didn't buy anything till I was done with them.

The lineup for the 360 has been incredible. I'm actually worried that by the time I get around to buying a 360, the generation will have advanced so far that I won't be able to enjoy Dead Rising, Condemned, GRAW, Oblivion, etc... the way the early adopters did.

I doubt that. Nice things about bargain bins and renting.

Tommy McClain