The problem here is that Legend looks over the 360 library which he personally likes a great deal and sees a slew of titles he can sink his teeth into, but when he looks at the Wii he doesn't see much he likes so he thinks "Who cares if it has sold more if the games on the 360 are better?" And while that point IS universally valid the perspective is definitely not. The ONLY way to fairly gauge widespread opinion is through widespread polling and thats what sales numbers represent, like it or not. With that said his individual purchase should absolutely be made through his perspective and is the only perspective he should consider for his purchases.
@Bod,
Your argument is really counterproductive. Sure you can take the obstinate position that even the choices of what kind of MOE is sufficient is an opinion but back here in reality the show must go on as they say. So acceptable margins of error are set in advance before people know what the results are so that their opinions aren't influenced by what they want the outcome to be. And anything within MOE is too close to call everything else is clear cut...this is how this type of uncertainty is handled and dwelling on it until obsession is truly an exercise in futility.
All of the acceptable MOEs for sales analysis have been established for a long time, long before this discussion was ever started and that kind of provably impartial decision is the sort of thing that should happily be accepted as good enough. Again we can raise objections about "good enough" being just an opinion but it is simply an exercise in futility since I can equally turn around and say that its only your opinion because BLAH BLAH, circular circular, worthless worthless, pointless pointless, and now back where we started!
Hopefully you see my point, and sorry if I'm being a bit blunt =P
As for the subject of whether we should use software or hardware in the measurement the reason we use hardware is simply because we have far far more reliable data on hardware than software. Not only do we have more points to check it against but one of those points is an absolute reference point and software rarely has that kind of info updated & available on a quarterly basis throughout its life.
So really if we are asking the question of where to draw the line on what is too fuzzy a "picture" I don't see how we can go wrong with choosing the option that is the least fuzzy of our choices.
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
