Analysts Warn of "struggle" For xbox.

[Bodhesatva]

alephnull said:

famousringo said:

I find it pretty amusing that you defend these analysts as intellectuals, and then condemn this site for group-think. The historical record is pretty clear that every analysis published was drinking the same kool-aid before this generation launched. It's the Playstation brand, Playstation will win, Playstation is synonymous with console gaming. The joke is that 18 months later, they're just watering down the same debunked ideas rather than face the obvious empirical reality.

response:

Right, I recall an article from the economist on march 22, 2007 citing forcasts which are pretty much the same as these, no doubt some scenarios have ruled out and averages have been adjusted. You use new data to adjust your prior on each of your various models in your ensemble.

famousringo said:

There may be a fair number of people who sing the same song on this site, but they base their ideas on factual data, rather than denying facts in favour of prior assertions. Do you really think that this site has a more serious group-think problem than the analysts who release charts with numbers that don't even agree with current empirical data, let alone present reasonable future trends?

response:

Firstly, everyone commenting on how a forcast can predict a lower install base in a later year simply cannot be basing their idea on "facts" as they seem to be lacking "facts" involving non-linearity and monotonicity.

So far I see 0 variance on this site in relation to the correctness of this particular forcast. I suspect this is not the case with the models that exist out there. In fact, if all your fancy model does is predict the same thing everyone else's does what is your selling point.

What "factual data" do people on this site have exactly? You have console sales by region. That's it. No information on population growth or demographic shifts in key regions. No information on economic growth and changes in income distribution in key regions. No information on currency shifts. No estimates of agregate demand functions for each console.This forum only details the symptoms, but we are dealing with a hidden markov model here.

You assume that they are ignoring the sales data in their models. But really there is no proof of this, you guys just don't like their models.

famousringo said:

I always thought that part of being an intellectual was acknowledging when the facts don't fit the hypothesis and refining your theory. These guys just keep adjusting the facts and restating the same hypothesis.

response:

It maybe that this is what is happening, but I really see no proof of this.

Good post. I agree, Ensemble Forecasting is the likely cause of a negative sales value for a single time frame. 

However, your insistence that this is an HMM is a circuitous -- and not entirely accurate -- claim. Obviously all market trends are, in a way, like HMMs; we know what's selling, but we're never entirely sure why (this makes our example fundamentally different than an HMM, by definition, but let's relax the definition slightly since it's not too far off) We have possible reasons, however. 

Again, it is always true that we know what's selling, but can never precisely know the reasons why. This is particularly true when a product in a well defined industry disrupts the understood values of the market (in the case of video games, those understood values would be multimedia features, graphics, and online functionality). In such cases, I'm sure you're aware that concrete, empirical data is particuarly and emphatically relied upon, and that is the condition the video game industry is currently in. Therefore, while it is unfortunate that the site offers little insight into demographic shifts or economic growth/depression, those factors are of significantly less importance in a disruptive environment.

But again, it's certainly not insignificant, and it's important that you bring it up. If you have access to any of the aforementioned data, please do provide it! It would certainly help, and you do seem to be reasonably aware of the variables considered in operational forecasting.