Jokeropia said:
You're the one who claimed knowledge about the issue by stating that the VC downloads were pitiful in comparison. There is no official XBLA data as far as I know, but the estimations I've seen put the total about equal to the VC total.
It would be really useful if we could get some official figures - or at least some educated estimates - brought into these discussions. AFAIK, Nintendo have released their own VC download figures at several points since launch. Microsoft and Sony have both released PSN/Live download totals, but do we have a breakdown of those into DLC, videos, demos, XBLA/PSN games etc.?
EDIT:
At E3 '07, Microsoft claimed 45 million game downloads (no breakdown AFAIK) on 7 million Live subscribers. In September 2007, they released more stats, including the figure of 290 million downloads from the Marketplace. This is total downloads and includes everything available in the Marketplace - demos, trailers, XBLA games, Xbox Originals, TV shows etc. - and we don't have a breakdown.
SCEA released figures in January 2008 that claimed 59 million PSN downloads, though again as far as I can tell, there wasn't a breakdown of this into demos, trailers, PS1/Arcade games etc. I'm also not sure if the figures applied just to the US or were global PSN figures.
The most recent figures for VC downloads I'm aware of come from a Q&A with Iwata in February 2008 where he claimed 10 million plus VC downloads. Figures in January 2007 were pegged at 1.5 million according to financial reports released at that time. I've also seen press reports quoting a 3.3 million figure from April 2007, and in November 2007 Nintendo claimed 7.8 million downloads.
On the face of it, the VC doesn't come off well, but it's worth noting a couple of things:
-- The PSN figures I can find don't show what game downloads look like. If the 59 million figure is correct, I would be very surprised if game purchases made up even 1/4 of that. A proper breakdown would be interesting and helpful here.
-- The Xbox 360 figures came nearly two years after launch, whereas the Wii figures come just over a year after launch. Still, if both sets of figures hold, the 360 is still doing very well and undoubtedly outperforms the Wii in terms of total game downloads - though not quite as drastically as the figures might initially suggest (290 vs. 10, for example)
-- If I've got it straight - and assuming Nintendo's figures are correct - they seem to be selling something like 500-600,000 games a month after the 1.5 million launch period. That kind of stability in the figures is good in one respect - the service is obviously seeing continued use - but it is also a little concerning in that they seem to be staying flat in the face of an increasing userbase.
It's interesting stuff, and it would be nice if anyone with access to more complete figures or who can interpret the available data better chipped in as well.