10 Million VC Download By December 2007
It is nice to get the periodic update on the state of online downloadable content, and Nintendo is more that satisfied to throw out continual updates as they come along. During a recent interview that GameSpot help with Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, he slipped in some sales figures for the year ending on the Wii:
“Well, the current state of affairs is that the Virtual Console saw over 10 million downloads by the end of last December. That’s the total number of titles people paid to download. I think that selling over 10 million classic games in that price range stands as proof that there are great possibilities with the download model.”
10 million certainly represents a whopping number, although there is no mention of actual revenue, but considering titles start at 5 dollars and work their way up, the 60 or 70 million dollar range seems very likely. Although in a sense, while the numbers are huge, the attach rates are not quite there yet. With 20+ million consoles out in the wild, far less than half of console owners have purchased a VC title, factoring in that many individuals are likely to have purchased more than one. While the money is certainly still decent on reselling old titles, we’ll have to see how well the WiiWare does, where the real money is to be made.