| amirnetz said: Wow, I love your questions. Do I have a cross-over in mind? Not yet, but I do have some ranges in mind though. Let's think through it together (it is a bit subjective and I know others may have other cross over points in mind): If one platform has on an average week 100% more titles overall (including 1st and 2nd) than the other platform (i.e. twice more), then this is clear and utter domination in market place. By now the winner/losers are well known. If the one platform has 50% more titles on an average week then I think it is also domination, though in early stages. If the one platform has 10% more titles on an average week then it will probably fly under the public perception radar. No harm done. If the one platform has 20% more titles on an average week then I think it is reaching the point of visibility. People may start noticing that one platform has always more titles than the others. This is the "red zone" for the lagging platform. It may still recover or get lucky and survive it, but it is certainly in danger. With 30% regular advantage to one platform than I think we have passed the cross over point and the death spiral will start. So I think we'll need to track which system is starting to trend towards the 20% and later the 30% advantage point. I don't think we are there today, but we need to track it over time to see what the trends are showing. Do you think this makes sense? |
It sounds reasonable to me.
I wonder if it would be possible to add some sort of qualitative--as opposed to quantitative--ranking for the visibility/appeal of a title. Perhaps something like:
o COD 6, Fallout, or GTA5 would be a high-visibility title (sales >= 1.5m) and granted a full point
o FIFA Soccer 09 or Burnout Paradise would be a medium visibility title (sales <= 1m) and granted a half point
o Need for Speed: Undercover or Conan would be a low visibility title (sales <= 100k) and granted a quarter point
The thresholds I chose are definitely arbitrary, but might fit within the high/medium/low visibility values. Using this sort of factor could possibly help alleviate situations where a COD title carries the same impact as a Conan title, which most consumers wouldn't equate because most consumers weren't interested in buying Conan.
With this in mind, if there are 100 total 3rd party games for consoles X and Y, and console X has 3 high-level exclusives, 4 medium level exclusives, and 3 low-level exclusives, then the total impact would be 3*1 + 4*.5 + 3 *.25 = 5.75 points exclusivity out of 100 titles, or 5.75%. This would likely be more fair than saying console X had 10 points exclusivity, or 10%.
It's not the most scientific way to approach it, but when dealing with qualitative measurements, compromises often have to be made. Alternative factors could be chosen to determine the qualitative impact due to lack of a title for a console, but consumer demand (sales) is probably one of the more reliable ones.
EDIT: obviously the full/half/quarter point assignments are quantitative values... hard to use high/medium/low in a calculation where the result should be a number 
