Screen Digest: Wii Ahead On Format Exclusives

Officials from UK-based analyst firm Screen Digest has announced the launch of a new regular report service, with the first bulletin suggesting that the Wii will lead the Xbox 360 and PS3 in the total number of games and exclusives during the final quarter of 2007. Named Games Bulletin, the first volume in the new series of reports focuses on software publishing in the final quarter of 2007. The report analyzes aggregated data from all current generation physical retail releases scheduled to ship in the final quarter of 2007. Using this data, the report found that publisher commitment was shifting significantly in favor of the Wii, with eighty-six titles scheduled for released between October 1st and December 31st this year. This compares to forty-seven titles for the Xbox 360 and thirty-eight for the PlayStation 3. Of these titles 25 percent on the Wii are format exclusives, compared to just eight on the Xbox 360 and five on the PlayStation 3. Screen Digest attributes these differences to the rapidly growing installed userbase of the Wii, lower development costs and the ease of transferring development resources from previous generation consoles. As a result, Screen Digest expects the number of games available for the Wii to exceed the Xbox 360’s library in early 2008. Ed Barton, Screen Digest games analyst and author of the first Games Bulletin, commented: “Halo 3 commanded the attention of the mass market and we expect Super Mario Galaxy for Wii to continue the process of educating the consumer as to the benefits of the current generation of home consoles.” “Given present publishing activity levels and hardware sales rates, we expect 256-bit gaming to have moved out of transition and squarely into the mass adoption phase by year end. While Wii and Xbox 360 are likely to look back on 2007 with some satisfaction, the same cannot be said for PS3,” continued Barton. “Given the platform’s release schedule this Christmas, it is not a surprise that Sony is focusing on lowering the cost of entry to PS3 platform to maintain parity with its rivals this Christmas,” he added.