The Wii version of "Shaun White Snowboarding" was heavily hyped and has sold well, but numbers crunched by MTV Multiplayer suggest that, once bought, the game is being neglected.
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As part of a week-long look at some of the Nintendo Wii usage stats I crunched over the weekend, I'm zeroing in on the curious performance of "Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip" for the Wii.
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The game has sold 538,000 copies in the U.S., according to the NPD group, which tracks sales. That's not surprising given publisher Ubisoft's heavy push for the game and Nintendo's support for the Balance-Board-supporting Wii version.
So what to make of the following facts regarding what people do with the game once they have it?
On the Nintendo Channel, where over two million Wii owners have contributed stats through their online-connected Wiis, only 71,487 hours of play time have been logged. That suggests that the people who bought the game aren't the kind of people who share their playing stats with the Nintendo Channel.
But here's the other odd finding: the average amount of playing time for this game, per player, is four hours and four minutes.
That game's only been out since November, but that seems low. One possible conclusion is that Nintendo Channel users have been distracted. They've certainly logged far more time -- almost 35 hours -- with "Animal Crossing: City Folk," which has been out for a similar amount of time.
Maybe a more fair comparison is another Balance Board game? The spring-released "Wii Fit" is averaging close to 16 hours, but it's been out for half a year longer. Maybe a sports game should be compared? The August-released "Madden" is averaging more than 19 hours per player.
The "Sean White" numbers could be a fluke. I'll keep tracking them. But maybe gamers are discovering that, once bought, "Sean White" isn't for them. We shall see.
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