I give up... someone PLEASE make a prediction based on actual evidence
So, last week, everyone was claiming Sony was "winning" the console wars because they outsold Microsoft in the UK, or because they are comparing Sony's numbers from 3 weeks in to Microsoft's numbers from just its first 24 hours.
Today, the internet is rife with speculation from articles like this that the PS4 is outselling Xbox One by 500k units because an analyst predicted it! And the basis for that prediction. Cost. And cost only. There is absolutely nothing else anywhere in the predictions that I can see to justify this estimate.
Worse, by far, is that these predictions apply to November's sales for both units. And the estimates centre on US sales. Which makes this that much more farcical.
BOTH CONSOLES ARE SOLD OUT EFFECTIVELY EVERYWHERE. ERGO, COST IS NOT *PRESENTLY* A FACTOR.
Probably the worst thing about me feeling the need to argue this is that I actually agree with these predictions. Just not for the period and region they are being predicting for. I fully expect that by, say, June 2014 PS4 will be in the lead in monthly sales and that this difference will be primarily cost driven.
Heck, based on reviews and relative levels of fan-boyism, the PS4 may even genuinely have the bigger following (or just the most vocal, hard to say which until the dust settles). So, come next year, even if MS drops their price Sony may still reach a point where they are outselling the Xbox One.
But that is a different argument entirely. To get back on topic, the predictions, which are in turn being treated by many sites as being as near to fact are specifically for North America during November 2013.
And, we have a wealth of rumours, stories, photos, etc..., that in North America at least, there were far more Xbox One's shipped to retailers than PS4's. Given that November has come and gone, and demand is still outstripping availability well into December. Frankly, how anyone with a brain could conclude that anything other than availability would be the limiting factor for November in North America is beyond reason.
In fact we can kill this prediction right here. Because both consoles are effectively sold out we can say with absolute certainty that availability became the limiting factor in November for both consoles long before other factors, such as price, even had a chance to enter the equation. So, should it turn out that this analysts predictions are numerically accurate, the basis by which they were arrived at, and any conclusion you may want to draw based on that are at best un-verifiable, and at worst blatantly inaccurate.
But, in light of reports of availability, it is highly unlikely that there were more PS4's available in the US or North America than Xbox One's and it seems even more absurd to imply that there were somehow 66% more PS4's available/sold than Xbox One's. Especially since virtually every such report indicated more Xbox One's being shipped than PS4's.
Misinformation isn't restricted to the PS4 side. There are also articles claiming Xbox "won" Black Friday sales based solely on the information from 2 retail chains. While those are 2 pretty large chains (Walmart and Target) they are far from the only 2 retailers stocking this item.
And while that conclusion is also flawed, these actually are fairly major retailers and this data likely represents a not insignificant amount of the total sales. Which means it still poses a potentially HUGE blow to this prediction because it shows that within this subsection of sales data I'm either right, or that the predictions are horribly wrong. It either means that the Xbox One sold more units simply because more were available as I suggested. Or, if I'm wrong and supply wasn't the limiting factor then not only didn't the price result in the sales of 66% more PS4's but amusingly Xbox One actually outsold PS4 by a factor of 2:1.
But, again, all that is, is fluff. In reality, we KNOW that Xbox One sold more units because more were available. We know that because retailers have acknowledged that they are sold out. So, we don't know if Xbox is more popular than PS4. We don't know if, or by how much, the $100 premium on the Xbox will affect long term sales. We really don't know much.
In fact, as I've previously argued, there is a good chance that ensuring they could manufacture more units than Sony may prove the single smartest thing that they could do. Especially with a $100 premium on their console. They were both released in the ball park of a month before Christmas. If a mother or father couldn't find a PS4 on the shelves for their kid(s), they may have opted for Xbox One simply because it was there and there wasn't time to gamble on the PS4 coming back in stock and them being able to get one. Sony may wake up to find a good number of its potential sales were cannibalized by a more expensive product... which after the PS3 launch must feel like a kick in the groin.
Today, the internet is rife with speculation from articles like this that the PS4 is outselling Xbox One by 500k units because an analyst predicted it! And the basis for that prediction. Cost. And cost only. There is absolutely nothing else anywhere in the predictions that I can see to justify this estimate.
Worse, by far, is that these predictions apply to November's sales for both units. And the estimates centre on US sales. Which makes this that much more farcical.
BOTH CONSOLES ARE SOLD OUT EFFECTIVELY EVERYWHERE. ERGO, COST IS NOT *PRESENTLY* A FACTOR.
Probably the worst thing about me feeling the need to argue this is that I actually agree with these predictions. Just not for the period and region they are being predicting for. I fully expect that by, say, June 2014 PS4 will be in the lead in monthly sales and that this difference will be primarily cost driven.
Heck, based on reviews and relative levels of fan-boyism, the PS4 may even genuinely have the bigger following (or just the most vocal, hard to say which until the dust settles). So, come next year, even if MS drops their price Sony may still reach a point where they are outselling the Xbox One.
But that is a different argument entirely. To get back on topic, the predictions, which are in turn being treated by many sites as being as near to fact are specifically for North America during November 2013.
And, we have a wealth of rumours, stories, photos, etc..., that in North America at least, there were far more Xbox One's shipped to retailers than PS4's. Given that November has come and gone, and demand is still outstripping availability well into December. Frankly, how anyone with a brain could conclude that anything other than availability would be the limiting factor for November in North America is beyond reason.
In fact we can kill this prediction right here. Because both consoles are effectively sold out we can say with absolute certainty that availability became the limiting factor in November for both consoles long before other factors, such as price, even had a chance to enter the equation. So, should it turn out that this analysts predictions are numerically accurate, the basis by which they were arrived at, and any conclusion you may want to draw based on that are at best un-verifiable, and at worst blatantly inaccurate.
But, in light of reports of availability, it is highly unlikely that there were more PS4's available in the US or North America than Xbox One's and it seems even more absurd to imply that there were somehow 66% more PS4's available/sold than Xbox One's. Especially since virtually every such report indicated more Xbox One's being shipped than PS4's.
Misinformation isn't restricted to the PS4 side. There are also articles claiming Xbox "won" Black Friday sales based solely on the information from 2 retail chains. While those are 2 pretty large chains (Walmart and Target) they are far from the only 2 retailers stocking this item.
And while that conclusion is also flawed, these actually are fairly major retailers and this data likely represents a not insignificant amount of the total sales. Which means it still poses a potentially HUGE blow to this prediction because it shows that within this subsection of sales data I'm either right, or that the predictions are horribly wrong. It either means that the Xbox One sold more units simply because more were available as I suggested. Or, if I'm wrong and supply wasn't the limiting factor then not only didn't the price result in the sales of 66% more PS4's but amusingly Xbox One actually outsold PS4 by a factor of 2:1.
But, again, all that is, is fluff. In reality, we KNOW that Xbox One sold more units because more were available. We know that because retailers have acknowledged that they are sold out. So, we don't know if Xbox is more popular than PS4. We don't know if, or by how much, the $100 premium on the Xbox will affect long term sales. We really don't know much.
In fact, as I've previously argued, there is a good chance that ensuring they could manufacture more units than Sony may prove the single smartest thing that they could do. Especially with a $100 premium on their console. They were both released in the ball park of a month before Christmas. If a mother or father couldn't find a PS4 on the shelves for their kid(s), they may have opted for Xbox One simply because it was there and there wasn't time to gamble on the PS4 coming back in stock and them being able to get one. Sony may wake up to find a good number of its potential sales were cannibalized by a more expensive product... which after the PS3 launch must feel like a kick in the groin.
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