Selling additional software and accessories is a good thing, but Jason Kraft and Chris Kwak's 'Video Game Journal' for the Susquehanna Financial Group also point out the bad signs in these high attach rates.
As your software sales increase you will see higher attach rates, this is true, however it also points out the lack of sales in the console itself. With such large figures it shows that hardcore gamers love the system and continue to purchase games for that system but the install base stays fairly even. Hardcore gamers buy a large quantity of games and accessories but they only buy one or two consoles. Who else is buying?
"If the Xbox 360 sports an attach rate of ten by holiday 2007, it will probably be because it has failed to gather critical momentum. What does it benefit publishers and investors if ten games are being purchased by a total audience of 10 million 360 owners? It doesn’t take effort to see that a console with an attach rate of 8 and an installed base of 50 million is superior to a console with an attach rate of 12 with an installed base of 20 mln."
There is some truth to that theory, new bleeding edge games should attracted new gamers to the console. This is important for third party publishers because they want you to buy their games but they also want to adopt new users into their installation base.
The analysts did not leave the PlayStation 3 out of this equation, it can occur with that console as well as the Xbox 360. Something to keep in mind when marketing figures come out and boast the amount of attachment figures. Lesson here, convince all your friends to buy the consoles so that those figures climb along with the games and accessories.
source: gamasutra.com
