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Adinnieken said:
cookingyourmama said:

The point being that when one console is consistently overtracked compared to another 1) There is obviously a problem with the data/formulas used to work out the sales in the first place and 2) Having a group of posters on this site constantly post pro MS stuff, cherry picking data, trying to make it seem as if the 360 is hard done by compared to the ps3 when in reality it is the other way round is not okay.

How, pray tell, do posts on a forum translate into any amount of sales data?  That has got to be the stupidist logic I've ever heard someone utter in my entire life, and I'm old.

It's like judging how many deer have been killed during hunting season, by how many protesters there are protesting animal violence.  There's no relevance to the data. 

Unless you have the hard data, unless you're paying for the hard data, then any form of extrapolation based on the analysis of data, especially when looking at past performance, will be flawed.  That's just a fact.  Not something you get your panties in a twist about. 

Why did every analyst get December 2011 wrong?  Because it's analysis.  If you have tunnel vision when you analyze data, if your methodolgy involves past performance, and you fail to factor in additional information, you're gonna have bad resulting data.  Everyone looked at December 2010 and November 2011 and said, December 2012 is gonna be an awesome month.  What was missed was one subtle, unassuming clue from early December, sales of consumers electronics following Black Friday nosed dived.  Analysis is as only as good as the data.  Miss a key piece of data and your analysis is off.  Analysts missed a critical piece of data in December.

Clearly, if you haven't figured it out by now, VGC data set is imperfect.  So what?  Who cares?  Unless you're basing your investment decisions on this data, and as a result, have chosen wrongly, then why does it matter that VGC's data isn't 100% accurate?  How much have you paid for the opportunity to get factual data and not speculative data?  How much?  Right, no one red cent/pence/euro.  

If you haven't figured out by now, you're pissing into the wind, my friend and no good comes of that.  You want to bitch about free data being imperfect and imprecise, then go to NPD and bitch to them.  They'll offer you more precise data, but it'll cost you.  In the mean time, accept that VGC's tracking data is ONLY a guide and NOT fact, then maybe life will be a little less frustrating for you. 

The data isn't perfect but when one console is consistently overtracked compared to another then clearly there is a problem. Beyond this tho having a forum where there is a group of posters who post almost nothing but pro MS stuff trying to make out the 360 is hard done by when in reality it is the ps3, all whilst making out that these forums are in fact biased towards Sony then that is another problem.