"The Console Market is Shrinking" is a BS Statement

[ICStats]

Zod95 said:

ICStats said:

Why lump sales together and miss all the detail behind the numbers?

Because it's hard to estimate the result of massive - large + slight. When you separate, you lose focus and you can easily be trapped in qualitative assessments that cannot be summed or compared.

I don't think we can estimate the total market, or the market shares of the consoles, without looking at the separate trends and factors affecting each console.

I'd love to see a quantitative model that would correclty predict Wii U will sell ~20 million less than Wii in the first 17 months.

I'm not saying let's estimate "massive - large + slight.".  Think of it as "outperform", "underperform", "market perform", terms used in analyst guidance.