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Squilliam on 16 October 2010
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Reasonable said:
Squilliam said:
Reasonable said:

 

Move by its nature is very hard to break down from unit sales to install base, as you rightly note - but not just for us, for Sony, too.  They sell to retailers, and only retailers have the actual individual transactions and these are almost never shared.  So Amazon.co.uk know I bought 2 Wands and a Navi as one customer, but all they're report back to Sony is the total, not the individual transaction that does reveal install base.

You wrote a lot... I deleted it. Anyway boiling it down to this one single point, the whole 'am I reasonable' question anyone in your position asked. It is a philisophical question. The likely answer is of course that it is likely PSN connected PS3s phone home at certain intervals. So of course they would know what ratio of hardware people are buying because they need to pass this information on developers who need to know how many Move, Nunchuck and Dual Shocks there are and what ratio in order to stipulate an appropriate number to use for multiplayer or single player. Like for instance, developers may want to know how common dual Move controllers would be.


That's an interestning idea - I know, because I work in retail, that they won't get the sales data from the retailers, but if they can capture this (not sure if they can, I guess I'd need to see if you agree to allow them to do this) then they might get an idea of what controllers you use and in what configurations.  Packs are normally defined based on estimates of sales profile then adjusted based on observed demand, but of course if they could create profiles through captured info they would get a fair idea of controller configuration.

There would still be noise though, my kids all take controllers to each others houses, so I've had lots of different dualshocks connected and my son took our two Move wands to his friends for a party, but I guess if they did get this info they could try and weed out common devices vs temporary ones.

I'm not sure they really do get this level of info regarding what you do, and of course what if you don't use PSN or are offline?  That would affect accuracy, too.

Nah... I still reckon getting a handle on true Move install base is going to be very tricky, although this could - if they do this - get closer than anything else.

You bastard! You said you were a programmer! How dare you lie to me like that! Now I find out you work in retail, how can any be reasonable working in retail?!

The quantity of analytics available this generation are quite staggering. Developers like Lionhead for instance know that people playing the game for the most part didn't use more than half of the features inside the game. Anyway there probably wouldn't be a significant difference between the offline and online population and they can adjust their figures because of already known data like the number of DS3 and Sixaxis controllers sold thus far against the total reported as being synced to the PS3.

Sure there would be a little bit of controller sharing but as a whole compared to the entire userbase this would be insignificant. With a know number of Move controllers and PsEyes and Nav controllers shipped and a known number of reorders as well as analytics from PS3s phoning home to say they have Move controllers attached they would have a very good picture of how many Move controllers the average person has, how common the navigation controllers are and how many non Move attached PsEyes out there.

 

 



Tease.