Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Refuting perceived negative statements against your console of choice is usually a very petty, fanboy kind of thing to do, but the New York Times' recent coverage of the Wii's terrible attach rate deserves it. The article has some problems that make the Wii seem to be in a worse situation than it is, though we don't know whether it's an intentional angle or a bit of haphazard reporting. John Scalzo of the Video Game Librarian blog identified some of the issues.

Scalzo identifies the paper's dependence on numbers from VGChartz (a "a team of analysts who study video-game sales"), their claim that Smash Bros. sales have tanked, and their spurious analysis of Guitar Hero III sales as noticeable problems with the coverage. The last is especially startling: the NYT claims that "Guitar Hero, for example, sold 2.2 million copies for the Wii, but 2.8 million copies for the Xbox 360 and almost 5 million for two versions of the PlayStation," bringing in the PS2 to make its point. "The only way the author could get the numbers he was looking for," Scalzo said, "was to combine the sales of Guitar Hero III on the PS2 and PS3 to push it past the Wii."

Hit the break for some of our own thoughts on the article.

One of the lesser-discussed topics that came up during Reggie's little tête-à-tête with various members of the press was the Wii's attach rate, which he compared to that of the PS2 at a similar point in that system's lifespan. Well, we figured it was our place to test that, so we have to ask: how many games have you bought? What about people you know? We're curious about the numbers, and not just this year, but since the system debuted last year.