Nintendo releases third-party sales chart, NPD clarifies some details

Nintendo has sent GameDaily a second chart to set the "record straight" that third-party titles do sell on the Wii -- when comparing all consoles for the first 19 months. We contacted NPD to get a little more objective perspective on the matter and the company broke down some data and answered our questions about the true impact of Wii Play.

For the first 20-months at market, which is pretty much what the above graph shows, this is the breakdown:

• Wii: 60 million software units total, 56% are third-party units or 33 million (Nov. '06 through June '08)
• Xbox 360: 35 million software units, 84% third-party or 29 million (Nov. '05 through June '07)
• PS3: 25 million software units, 82% third-party or 20 million (Nov. '06 through June '08)

The life-to-date sales for the Xbox 360, which was out a year before everything else, would skew the numbers to show a total of 82 million units sold, with 82% third-party, for a total of 67 million units. As for the "software" controller bundle known as Wii Play, it has sold 6 million units. If we completely removed Wii Play from the Nintendo figures, it would actually boost the company's third-party data to 62% of a 54 million unit total.

So, obviously, third-party games sell on Wii. The perception that they don't is probably caught up in sales ratios and looking at the 80%-plus third-party sales on the competing consoles. Also, third-party publishers probably aren't looking at just the first 19 months, those companies probably look at the overall sales chart. We've altered the chart above to reflect the big picture in the graph below.