Aielyn said:
First of all - both you and kowenicki need to start trimming your quotes, this is getting ridiculous. Second of all, it's not cherry picking to look at last year and use that as a guide to this year. What is different about 2011-2012 compared with 2006-2007 is that early in the generation, there was anticipation of increasing sales and a pattern of sales that were increasing year over year. That is no longer true - we're in the tail end of the generation, sales are in decline - as noted, sales have dropped from 140,000 a week in 2011 to 80-90,000 a week in 2012. Beyond that, though, you completely ignore that in all previous years, MS had over 1.2 million in supply... but in 2011, it dropped to below 1 million. You intentionally ignore that the outlier sits in the most significant position (the most recent data point) in order to make your claim. If the supply dropped in 2011, why did it drop? Is it reasonable to conclude that it will have returned to a higher number this year? Logic dictates that the retailers have noticed a decrease in sales, and will be reducing their call for more stock. Of course, the whole "number of days of stock" argument is a poor one, but it doesn't invalidate the conclusion, which is that one would expect stock to be decreasing as retailers anticipate the coming of the next generation and notice a decrease in sales of the current gen systems. What amazes me is that you seem to think that MS are maintaining the 1.3 million or so in supply. MS don't have any say in it. Retailers order the stock they think they need, and there's no reason to think that they're going to want over 1 million in stock now, given the circumstances. While I don't think it'll be 0.6 million, I'm betting it'll be below 0.8 million, and VGChartz will not be overtracking. It's worth also pointing out that, whereas Gears of War 3 was releasing within 13 weeks at the equivalent point last year, Halo 4 isn't due for about 20 weeks this year, and those are the notable 360 exclusives for the respective time periods. In other words, there's less reason to expect an upcoming boost to system sales numbers. |
It is cherry picking when that one year is the exception to the rule and as well as that only one aspect of it is treated as a fact whilst the actual total number itself is just swept under the rug.
The problem is you're just guessing at what the retailers thought and as well as that, at that point in time the 360's April-June average weekly sales had decreased from 98,000 to 79,000 from 2006 to 2007 yet the retailers still ordered a very high number leaving over 1.2 million on shelves which was a similar amount.
The amount of days of supply in the retail chain when it comes to the 360 is all over the place, it's not very consistant at all and is a very poor method of trying to state as a fact what the next shipment will be and wether anything is over or undertracked.
The next generation hasn't started yet and it won't start in the next quarter of sales either. On top of that the WiiU isn't going to magically save everything and the retailers know that the only way that they're going to have a good year is if the 360 and ps3 sell VERY well over the second half of the year. The retailers want the consoles to sell well and of course Microsoft is going to tell them "Yeah order loads, everybody is going to want our console, we've got all these great games coming out, price drops, special deals, yeah order loads" so for all you know that's what retailers are doing.
