COKTOE said:
To be fair, the numbers change. That that rankings don't change is irrelevant. Without going back to look, I think this this was all about averages. I don't think thismeintiel ever thought anything but the averages would be different. Virtual Boy wasn't vaporware. It was a legitimate product, and it should be included in Nintendo's aggregate. |
While it is a legitimate Nintendo product, it paints the wrong picture of the average success (i.e. sales) of average Nintendo products. Both the Wii U and the Vita were also failures, but they held more traditional roles in the line-up of their respective companies and were given the support that role required.
The virtual boy is such an outlier because it was indeed an incredible %&#-up. It was literally dead - Nintendo abandoned it right after birth and left it in the dumpster. The history of the product itself is not like an average Nintendo product (and would definitely not be a representation of an average Sony product either).
If someone wanted to measure the average success of a class based on their income post-graduation, the statistician would take out the one guy who is a multi-billionaire because it would significant affect the mean income of the class. The whole class would seem richer than it actually is. The data is useless and non-representative. An outlier is an outlier.
