TheSteve said:
Yeah, I totally screwed that one up... Also: uber, I DID know... I was f-ing with you (maybe I should have just said "stick to comedy" instead of *bumps knux*... I expected you to be sharp enough to pick up on it.) And you are right... taking the linear model at face value is absurd, since you wind up with negatives, rather than the tails of a bell curve extending infinitely in both directions... But it's still a better indicator of trends for analysis then averaging the sales over time (which is what you were offering). My KZ example isn't a strawman, it's more of a micro view of the flaw in your "PS3 has been out for two years and has sold 20m, thus PS3 sells 10m a year" theory. We both know that the high sales in the first year skew the average, much like KZ's high sals in its first week or two. If you just said "KZ sold 1.5m in 9 weeks, so KZ sells about 166,000 a week," you'd be WAY off from a predictive analysis standpoint. However, as flawed as the linear method is, it's going to give you a MUCH more accurate read on where the sales are going. Other than that, how the hell are you? |
well i'll be a son of a bitch. i didn't figure you for a big enough geek to be on this site.
my comment about the ps3 selling 10m a year was descriptive. i wasn't trying to posit that as anything predictive. game sales are closer to radioactive decay models than anything linear, but console sales are a different beast altogether. to be honest i have done that much comparative analysis with the first two years to be able to say what i think is happening in 2009. but if you say the trend is that the ps3 is pulling fewer numbers per year then i'll concede it.
my theory at the moment as to the sales decline is that people are pretty dumb. they look at the ps3 as primarily a toy, and a very expensive one at that. for the vast majority of potential customers, the entire functionality of the ps3 is beyond their interest. i don't know of too many parents who would spring for that for their kids over a cheaper 360, when they can play pretty much the same games. throughout gaming history, next gen consoles typically started between 3 and 4 hundred bucks. to start at 6 really shocked the masses, and so the ambition of sony might have been its doom.
but things are great. i really like doing law. the clients sometimes get to me (overly litigious folk looking for quick money), but fighting insurance companies is super satisfying. why haven't you been at the other place? you've missed out on much discussion.
art is the excrement of culture
