| Sullla said: That article was a gigantic pile of fence-sitting. As far as I could tell, DFC Intelligence said nothing other than "it's too early to call" and "let's wait and see what happens next summer." And they get paid to do this?! At least some of the other analyst groups actually make predictions, even if they are often laughable. Let me highlight the fundamental flaws in the assumptions that they've made. Here are the key lines from their report: If all hardware manufacturers make their stated shipment goals over the next year, no system will have more than 40% market share when we revisit this issue next summer. Furthermore, by that time we will only be about 20% into the new generation. There are two major assumptions at work here. First of all, DFC makes it clear that they are focusing on shipping numbers, not sales when talking about the upcoming year. That's a major stroke against any kind of insightful analysis, and we're left with a statement that says relatively little. I agree: no one will have more than 40% market share if we count shipped numbers and ignore actual sales. Microsoft hit their 10 million shipped goal for end of 2006, and Sony hit their shipped goal of 5.5 million at the end of March - but their sales were nowhere close to those numbers. It will be the same thing in 2008: Sony can easily meet their target of shipping 11 million PS3s this fiscal year, but they sure aren't going to sell that many. Comparing market share of "shipped" units paints an inaccurate picture and is a waste of time. Secondly, DFC has completely swallowed Sony's statement that this will be a 10-year console generation ("we will be only 20% into the new generation.") No offense, but I call BS on that idea. There has never been a previous console generation that lasted anywhere close to 10 years before, simply because whichever company is doing poorly in the market will try to rush out a new system heralding a new generation, forcing everyone to response or be left behind. Even if all three current console companies decided to ignore this precedent, a new company would almost certainly step in to fill the void, as the current systems became more and more outdated. If Apple could launch a system 5x more powerful than any current console and sell it (at a profit) for $250 in 2012, don't you think they would? Someone will introduce a new console before 2016; it's an inevitability considering how the gaming market works and technology becomes cheaper/simpler each year. In short, once again the analysts have me scratching my head. I have no idea where they come up with their predictions (or non-predictions based on poor assumptions, in this case). TheSource does a much better job than these clowns. |
Yup. That basically says it all. The Source FTW!
