Just how unbiased are you?

[binary solo]

I'm biased when it comes to what console I want to sell best, because being best selling means (usually) have the best over all game content.

When it comes to crunching numbers, analysing sales and predicting the future I attempt to be completely unbiased. There is no point, and nothing to be gained, by putting biased attitudes into reading the data and coming out with foolish conclusions, that almost always end up being proven wrong, merely because that's what your heart desires. I may feel like I'm swallowing a dead rat when I predict sales that do not support my bias towards wanting the console I own to win. But I will swallow that dead rat because it is better to be proven right and have to digest a dead rat, than to be proven wrong and to have to eat crow. Doesn't mean I won't be wrong in my predictions as often as I'm right. But at least I can point to objective information that pointed to my reading of the market being reasonable at the time. Like for instance predicting PS4 would be at ~16.5M LTD at the end of 2014. There was very good historical evidence to suggest that was a likely level of sales at the time I made that projection (August I think). That PS4 beat that by nearly 2 million is still hard to figure. But there were people who merely because of irrational bias were thinking far less than 16.5 million. They had no rationale or historical evidence for their projection, just a desire that PS4 not sell as much as that. Similarly with the 20 million projections, those were all fans who just wanted to see PS4 achieve Wii-like sales. Kudos to the ambitious, but not crazy, fans who said 18-19 million.

I do like reading other people's sales predictions that are pulled out of biased arses though.