Sony's Attach Rate for Blockbusters Is Better than Microsoft's

Sony is pushing hard to show gamers that the gap in performance between the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 is not that great. And the latest argument pushed by the Japanese company is that the attach rate for major titles is bigger for the PS3, which means that those who get the console are more eager to get and play major titles published for it than those who pick up the Xbox 360.

Examples were offered to Gamasutra by Sony. Street Fighter IV, one of the biggest titles of early 2009, has, as of the beginning of March, only sold 44,000 more copies on the Xbox 360 than on the PS3. This is not consistent with the 2 to 1 ratios that Microsoft has been claiming in recent weeks. The attach rate is 5.5% for the Sony made console, while on the Xbox 360 it was only of 3.1 %.

Sony says that “If you factor in Xbox 360’s longer time in the marketplace and larger install base, Xbox 360 should be selling twice as many software units as PS3 if attach rates were equal - and that is just not what we are seeing at retail with many multiplatform titles.”

For Tomb Raider: Underworld, the PlayStation 3 has seen more sales than the Xbox 360, while Prince of Persia, from Ubisoft, sold just 36,000 more units on the Microsoft console. Only for a game like Grand Theft Auto IV, which has received exclusive DLC for the Xbox 360 version, is the gap clear, with 1,959,768 units sold for the PS3 compared to more than 3 million for the Microsoft console.

Sony is also saying that PS3 titles are doing better critically, revealing that 31% of the games for its console get a Metacritic score of more than 80, compared with just 23% for the Xbox 360.