HappySqurriel on 16 May 2008
| Viper1 said: Something that caught my attention this morning. Dozens of analysts, supposition suppliers and part time fortune tellers at the quickie mart are suggesting that the hardware boom from GTAIV will make an appearance in May as opposed to April. Now on the surface, just below the first epidermal layer, is a level of plausibility since GTAIV only had 5 days of tracking in the retail period but will obviously have several weeks worth for NPD May. So what's the problem? I'm hungry and it's lunch time but aside from that, I've never seen a system seller not have an impact during its release month even with just 5 days or data. Go take a look at some big name late month release titles and compare their NPD. But just for the sake of argument, let's say all those wanting to buy a PS360 (above normal demand) decided to wait arbitrarily until after May 3rd to make their purchase. How does one come to this assumption? What factors suggest that people are waiting until a week after launch to buy their console? This is the most front loaded, or hyped, game in history so you'd think the largest uptake in consoles would be the first week. Software launch sales, hardware launch sales, opening week for movies, etc....week one typically carries a huge % of sales across the next several weeks. What makes GTAIV such the oddity? What suggest GTAIV is going against the grains of logical sales trends? Now try applying this same gamers-will-arbitrarily-wait-to-buy-console theory on MKWii. Yep, sounds right silly to think would be Wii owners decided to wait until after May 3rd to pick up their console (outside of simply not finding any in stock, of course). Ah such is the life of those-who-are-paid-to-give-us-their-opinions. |
I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that a lot of bloggers and analysts are using this approach in a desperate effort to save face; they spent a lot of April 'bashing' the Wii and claimed that Grand Theft Auto 4 was going to be the second comming, and now are trying to buy time before people completely ignore them. If they're successful, in the middle of June (when the May NPD numbers come out) the 'failure' of GTA4 to sell HD consoles will be old news and they will move onto claiming that people were holding off for the Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle.
