WiiWare

Out of the 18 WiiWare games released at the time research was conducted, all had pages on the Nintendo Channel but only five had usage statistics. This is a small enough list of games that they can be looked at all individually.



Defend Your Castle: Played a total of 120,388 times with an average of 3.58 play sessions per person polled, it can be estimated that just over 33,600 people bought and played Defend Your Castle. This makes it the biggest tracked WiiWare game in terms of volume, a success that can almost certainly be attributed to its presence at launch and bargain basement price of 500 Wii Points. These players played the game for 105,315 hours total—about three hours and eight minutes per person, or about 52 and a half minutes per play session. That’s not bad traction for a game experience as simple as this one provides.



Dr. Mario Online Rx: People on average spent 5.37 sessions pouring colored pills down their patient’s throats, to a total of 119,934 sessions. So just 22,300 people polled played this, then, but again, that could be worse for a game that has been released multiple times in the past and is available on a very new distribution service. The people who did buy it played it more than the Defend Your Castle folk—a total of 154,455 hours went into this game, for six hours 54 minutes per person or 77 minutes per play session.



Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King: 140,089 sessions of this game have been played, at an average of 5.43 sessions per person. This estimates out to about 25,800 people, which makes it the second most successful tracked WiiWare games in terms of volume and far and away the highest grossing at its 1500 Wii Points price. It’s also the WiiWare game that’s sucked the most man hours; 333,395 of them at this count, for an average of twelve hours and 55 minutes per person or two hours and twenty two minutes per session. It makes one wonder if Square Enix fans rest their eyes every hour, like the manuals have been telling them to for decades.



LostWinds: The critical darling of the WiiWare launch doesn’t fare nearly as well in the stats. At 68,225 play sessions and an average of three sessions per person, an estimated 22,700 of the people polled played this. This puts it squarely in the middle of the range, beating out Dr. Mario Online Rx and My Pokemon Ranch—and My Pokemon Ranch has spent a much shorter time on the Nintendo Channel getting polled. Although the man-hours the game has sucked away also seem low, the 68,225 hours total comes out to three hours and thirteen minutes per person. This is enough time to complete the game once.



My Pokemon Ranch: The newest WiiWare game polled has already been played 143,146 times by people who average 7.04 play sessions, making for about 20,300 people total. As it turns out, the people who bought My Pokemon Ranch love to spend time with their Pokemon—100,666 hours of it to be exact, for an average four hours and 57 minutes per person. This also bears out to a short-ish session length of about 42 minutes. Apparently the Pokemon Ranch is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

NEXT: Virtual Console