You know, I think what I dislike most about gaming "analysts" (whether professional analysts or gaming media people) is that they don't actually perform analyses - they regurgitate some numbers, then describe their pet predictions. Neither of which is an analysis. They don't take those numbers, the sales data, and, for instance, find correlations between game and system sales, nor do they examine connections with, for example, game hype, advertising, or upcoming game lineups.
What ends up happening is that they make bold predictions about what will happen, on the basis that what has happened before will happen again (depending on their preferred system, they always bias in favour of one system), and that the only thing that will influence that is price cuts.
What does the Xbox 360 have coming in 2011 to maintain the sales it saw in 2010? Not in terms of new hardware or price cuts, but software - the things that people buy the hardware to play. They don't even MENTION upcoming 360 titles, despite the fact that such titles are pretty much absolutely essential to making a coherent prediction.
Choice of language can be revealing. Did you notice that, rather than saying that the 360 sold nearly as well as the Wii, the phrasing was that the 360 nearly outsold the Wii? And without making mention of the Wii having a weaker year, either.
Put simply, I'm disgusted by the utter failure of all these so-called "analysts" to actually analyse anything. It means that, rather than actually forming reasonable predictions and informing the public properly, they spread their personal biases, drive fanboy hysteria (both positive and negative), and make the hardcore all the more elitist because they don't actually understand what they're talking about.
