Attach Rates

by gtaadmin on 14/04/09 at 7:08 pm

The attach rate of a console is a measure of how many console specific games are bought for that console. For example, if the average PS3 user buys 6 games, then the attach rate is 6:1. Attach rates can also apply to particular games, too. For example, if 1,000 Xbox 360s are sold and 500 copies of GTA IV have been sold for the Xbox 360, then the attach rate is 500 / 1,000 = 50%. The attach rate can offer a supplementary view of sales performance, in addition to those absolute sales numbers.

What Attach Rates Tell Us About Performance

Consider the following table detailing fictitiouse sales of consoles and games for them. The figures are completely made up.

If we just look at the absolute values, sales of GTA IV for Xbox (5,000) were greater than GTA IV for PS3 (4,000). Yay for Microsoft. However, the attach rate for GTA IV on Xbox 360 was 2.5% compared to an attach rate of 2.6% for PS3. This means that if Sony continue to sell the same number of consoles as Microsoft, they are expected to realise 5,333 sales, beating Microsoft's 5,000. Yay for Sony.

Attach Rate Biases

Attach rates are often skewed by the actions of early adopters, whose behaviour may not be respresentative of the general buying population. As the age of a console grows, this skew's influence will diminish.

Attach Rates Don't Tell The Whole Story

At face value, when comparing the performances of two platforms and their respective games sales, a higher attach rate would seem to be a good thing. However, this is not necessarily the case. A particular console would experience high attach rates for its games if its hardware sales were dying. After all, the attach rate only describes the ratio between console and game sales. The absolute values for those sales figures should also be considered.

For example, 2 sales of Xbox 360 in the whole of the Arctic Circle balanced against an average of 50 games per console equates to a staggeringly good attach rate of 50:1. But only 2 Xboxes were sold... Boo for Microsoft.

The moral of the story is that attach rate means nothing without a context. And that context is the number of hardware sales that were made.

And going back to the table above, Microsoft did actually sell more consoles and more games...

The numbers were fiction. Let it go.