Insidb said:
Selection bias, whether conscious or unconscious, is evidenced by confirmation of the narrative through unsolicited data points.
Things like "two month lead, best of all-time lineup, overcoming expectations," and framing the console race being all about power can be parsed out with contradictory evidence. In this narrative and so many others, for instance, the 3DS has become the forgotten soldier: it's outsold the PS4, shown the robust strength of the portable market, and that Nintendo never left. As I've long said, nothing absolute exists to define expectations: Switch is bridging markets, the WiiU tapered off and was scuttled, the Wii curb-stomped a generation, the mobile market is swallowing up portable gaming, the new console-sellers are 3rd party, etc. There's just too much data to make any meaningful predictions. Even the lineup isn't console exclusive, as they are also WiiU games. I would call it great, but even that must be tempered by that fact.
In summation, after being hounded with the "consoles are dead mantra," 2017 has shown that to be anything but true. Not only did BF light up the sales charts, but it did 2016 one better: 3 consoles, as opposed to 2. The sales have been so impressive that we're all still debating who led the charge, and that's the great story of 2017.
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