Well, you know, when the chances of a phenomenon happening are infinitesimal for the purposes of your current study, it not happening is part of the hypotesis zero. A cow could jump to the moon through a quantum tunneling fluke, but you don't debate the assumption that it won't when studying their behaviour :)

In the same way I wouldn't see the need to question the assumption that adding enough users to an existing base will expand its demographic composition. The probabilities that it won't are exponentially small.

No, it really wouldn't. Common sense will show you that a console with a larger userbase will almost always have more varied demographics than a console with a lower one. This isn't always true (for example, I'm sure that the Gamecube userbase was more varied than the Xbox userbase), but for large userbase differences (PS2 vs. Xbox or Gamecube, DS vs. PSP), it's almost always true.

Your city analogy was terrible. It really was. The difference between a gay and straight person is not the same as the difference between a person who prefers action games to adventure games (not that I'm implying any connection). Cities have way more variety to them then consoles due to the fact that there are thousands of cities in the world in thousands of different locations with thousands of different cultures and customs. How in the world is this in any way similar to the three consoles? And as for your example, what is the likelihood of that? What you're referring to is density of a certain demographic. I don't even think I need to explain further why your analogy was bad. It just was.

Okay, to sum up the points I've been trying to make in this thread: Use common sense. There.

All the fancy words don't make your point more valid , for the sake of ease of communication please dumb it down a bit :) .One of your problems is the assumption that the demographic has to diversify as it becomes larger , it's possible that the demographic doesn't change one bit and like you clearly explained it's possible but so improbable it's not worth discussing.

But what if the demographic only marginaly diversifies as it expands ? this may very well be the case with the 360 or the PS3 , your argument makes it apear as if there is only Yes and No , On and off but there is a range of possibilities here.

Ha ha ha NinjaKido. What was the fancy word in his post? Was it composition, probability, or exponentially? I agree that 4 or 5 syllable words can be intimidating, but then look at what you wrote:

"We can't just look at things quantativley to reach any sort of serious conclusion , we need to know the qualitive factors and that requires data we don't have access to."

So, if you're so scared of "fancy" words, don't use them yourself. It makes you a hypocrite.

I'll take factual data or consistent histroical data over " common sense" any day , and even historical data won't proove much use as the nature of gaming change slightly every generation , this generation probably more so than previous generations. You've already said that your common sense "assertion" isn't stricly true , if this is the case then how can you confidently say that it applies to this generation ?

Your arguing a point you can't proove , i'm not arguing a point other than a point can't be prooven without serious evidence.

My "gay city" analogy was a simiplified explanation of my point , probablity would indicate that a larger demographic would have a more diverse demographic but realsticly any number of situations are possible , that was my point.

Sorry if those words come across as fancy , those are the words I learn in business studies so I make the mistake of assuming everyone knows them ... i'm not trying to be hyprotical just trying to make sure I can communicate my points effectivley in response to everyone else , I need to be able to fully understand them to be able to do that.

^I'm not trying to quantify the expansion.
That would take making hypothesis on the parent distribution, ie on the general demographic distribution from which we pick people to add to owner bases. And of course the diversification would be gradual. Well, as gradual as a certain category going from 0 to 1 person in it allows :)

I was only pointing out to kowenicki that even if there was no strict logic implication, what MontanaHatchet said has a clear statistical value.

PS: sorry if what I wrote came out as "fancy". I tried to be very essential and sinthetic, part of my own background.

We can't continue unlessy you dumb it down a bit seriously , I don't know some of the terms your using.

So you'd take your data over common sense any day, but then you say that even your data won't do? Why even bother arguing then? Apparently neither of us are right and neither of can be proven right so why don't we just stop arguing right now and go have a nice moonlit walk. I said almost always because in very rare occasions it might not be true and I didn't want to make a definitive statement. I can say it applies to this generation because the stats prove it. Just look at some of the Nielsen charts and see how the Wii has more female users and more young users than either of the HD consoles. No different from the PS2.

I'm arguing a point I can prove. Instead of digging up old demographic reports and proving you wrong the hard way, I've decided to let you go easy and just assume you have common sense. The common sense to realize that with a much larger demographic, there is more diversity. The PS2 had more users from various countries. It was popular in nations where the other consoles were almost unknown. The...demographics...were...more...varied.

It seems you're trying to argue that my point isn't always true, whereas all I'm saying is that the majority of the time it is true and it's been true for every console so far.