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RolStoppable said:

1. You are making a bunch of errors here. It's a bad analysis to look at first week sales of a console in relation to its lifetime sales in order to conclude how frontloaded a generation is. Additionally, you can't prove a trend with only two data points. Lastly, your conclusion makes no sense. If Wii sold ~0.5% of its lifetime sales in week 1 and Wi U sold ~3.5%, and I am applying 2% to Switch for argument's sake, then I am getting 70m units for Switch's lifetime sales to reverse the trend you claim to exist. Remember, you are making the claim that generations are getting more frontloaded; I did not say anything about exactly matching the Wii's sales pattern which is how you must have arrived at 250m.

3 generations is already a lot considering the whole videogaming history has at most 9. And we don't have N64 and GC data, so it may be even more than 3.

2% isn't really a trend reversal. If generations go from 7x more front loaded to 2x less frontloaded and so on,they go from 0.5% to 3.5% to 2% to 14% to 8% to 56%, etc. That's clearly an upward trend. A trend reversal is if NS does more than 250M in order to go as low as Wii.

 

RolStoppable said:

2. Wii U by year from mid-november to mid-november to measure comparable 12-month-periods:

2012/13 - 3.9m
2013/14 - 3.6m
2014/15 - 3.3m
2015/16 - 2.8m (VGC has overtracked this period, so it should actually be half a million less than 2.8m)

This argument was about a sales pattern where you proposed a decline of 33% from year 1 to year 2 and another 33% decline from year 2 to year 3 which I called unprecedented. The Wii U was a failure that was left in the dust by the competition, but even it only declined by ~10% each year. If Switch sells at least 9m in its first 12 months - which is likely, because it will be halfway there by the end of June - and follows the Wii U pattern, we are looking roughly at this:

Year 1 - 9m
Year 2 - 8m
Year 3 - 7m
Year 4 - 5m
Total - 29m

You said: "Your prediction has no grounds in reality anymore, because it would require a dropoff in sales rate that is unprecedented."

I haven't denied it. I just replied: "WiiU was unprecedented", which means unprecedented things do happen and they have grounds in reality because they are reality themselves.

 

RolStoppable said:

3. My prediction isn't an infinite range. It has a minimum value. I could understand your criticism here if my minimum value was 20m, because that would be such a low bar that it would be easy to end up being right. But a minimum value as high as 100m doesn't make it easy, especially when 50m is already considered an optimistic outlook by the vast majority.

Oh, really? "More than 100M" isn't an infinite range? Are you sure?

Your prediction is not comparable to mine. I didn't say "less than 20M", I said 20M. This means I acknowledge I won't nail it and that I am expecting the real number to be under or above my prediction. I didn't come up with a high number X I was comfortable with to say "less than X". Nor did I come up with a low number Y I was comfortable with to say "more than Y". I came up fully committed with a number (one number only) that would translate precisely my thought.

Imagine this alternative scenario. I see everybody coming up with predictions for NS between 150M and 200M. Then I criticize one person for predicting 180M. He's not saying more than 180M, he's not saying less than 180M, he's saying 180M. He tells me it's easy to criticize him without making a prediction. Then I tell him I predict less than 100M. Deep inside I believe 20M. But saying that "wouldn't have had any benefit for me, rather it would have only made it harder for me to be right". So I act sly and unfair and tell him "I could understand your criticism here if my minimum value was 180m, because that would be such a high bar that it would be easy to end up being right. But a maximum value as low as 100m doesn't make it easy, especially when 150m is already considered a pessimistic outlook by the vast majority". See the problem?

It's becoming more and more clear to me how easy it is to criticize and how hard it is to make an actual prediction.

 

RolStoppable said:

4. Link to the prediction thread: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=224679

Created on January 14th, two days after Nintendo's Switch presentation.

No, that's the one I already saw. That poll goes from 10M to 10M, so it's not balanced because it concentrates low-number predictions and disperses high-number predictions. This would be more balanced: <10M ; 10M-20M ; 20M-40M ; 40M-80M ; 80M-160M ; >160M.



Prediction made in 14/01/2014 for 31/12/2020:      PS4: 100M      XOne: 70M      WiiU: 25M

Prediction made in 01/04/2016 for 31/12/2020:      PS4: 100M      XOne: 50M      WiiU: 18M

Prediction made in 15/04/2017 for 31/12/2020:      PS4: 90M      XOne: 40M      WiiU: 15M      Switch: 20M

Prediction made in 24/03/2018 for 31/12/2020:      PS4: 110M      XOne: 50M      WiiU: 14M      Switch: 65M