shams said:
Its not an estimate. A corporate, financial forecast is supposed to be as accurate as possible. Companies hire many people, and pay them large amounts of money to come up with these numbers. In many ways, the perceived quality of a company is based on how accurate their forecasts are. (and there isn't really any issue with upping the numbers - if a product sells better than expected, no issues there!) ... In my opinion, this is another issue of 'Sony arrogance'. From the minute it was issued, it was seen as completely unrealistic. Sony have had TWO chances now to amend the figures - and have taken neither. At the end of this qrt, they have one more chance (not sure when the quarterly statement for end of '07 is issued - maybe early Feb or something like that). There is no shame in amending the figures to, say... 9m. Its better to be conservative rather than overly bullish. IMO - this is a ploy to get publishers "excited" about the future PS3 performance (aka EA's comments not that long ago), and prevent more publishers from dropping PS3 titles (or making them X-platform). Say Ninty forecast 50m Wiis for the next 12 months. Its a completely unrealistic figure - but it would excite a lot of people. Their share price would skyrocket. It might even be enough to get publishers to immediately divert funds to Wii development - on the spot. Its only 12 months later, than the numbers are seen as "wrong" - and they take some flak for a bad prediction. But in the meantime - they reap the benefits of increased 3rd-party support. (do it too many times though - and people cease to believe your projections - then there is trouble...) ... If they manage to legitimately hit these numbers, I'll happily EAT CROW over this. |
Yeah it's true. If you think people are being harsh on Sony now... see how harsh people are when they're numbers come out. In otherwords, see how big a hit their stock price takes. Lower your estimations and you take a small hit. Miss your estimations, you take an average big hit, say you are going to hit your estimations till the last minute and you don't... then you take a pretty large hit. Not to mention you lower invetor confidence, which hurts the perceived value of the company capping how high it can rise again, though usually as shams says it takes a couple reports like this that are basically seen has lies to the investors and potential investors. People don't like when you lie to them in matters that involve their money.
