(Arstechnica) Analysis: Sony continues to widen its console sales lead over Microsoft

I love that this board instantly calls this shit out and noone dares to defend it lol. Jesus christ, what a horrible article.
 
Zombie James said:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/...-widen-its-console-sales-lead-over-microsoft/

There are some interesting graphs from Ars, like always:

console-wars-q3-20153duzg.jpeg


console-wars-q3-201512z92.jpeg


console-wars-q3-20154cudf.jpeg




Lock it up if old.
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I don't think one can extrapolate that way.
 
I love you, Kyle. King of awful console sales analysis. Never stop.

EoinOL said:
2038:

X3a57zl.png


By 2040, just Xbox Ones outnumber humans (PS4s take until 2045 to reach this landmark). By 2050 there are over ten consoles for each human (and 80% of them are Xbox Ones).
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Bravo. This is too good.
 
Mentok said:
Such a perfect .gif to sum this up. I know they admit their process of extrapolation wasn't done right...but then why bother in the first place?
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I'm thinking it's a variant of "I don't want to sound racist but . . ."
"I don't want to make things up, but with imagination, graphs and a will . . ."
 
This article is an excellent example of why people need to learn maths. There's a thread on OT where some fool reckons math has no use in real life.
 
alr1ght said:
In 2084, will there be enough PS4s and Xbones for all 7 billion+ people in the world?
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No, because in 2044 consoles will becone so prolific that there will be an actual World Console War 1 (see entry for WCW2, Oct 2044) to WCW 7 (Dec 2045) that results in the permanent 503ing of NeoGAF.com.

This event was immediately acknowledged as irrelevant due to the fact that all NeoGAF accounts had been banned and thus the world entered what later became the Console Dark Ages.
 
Irrespective of the math or charts, where is he getting the data for Xbox sales increasing? Orland's figures are higher than most reliable estimates and MS stopped publishing numbers. I think his very premise that Xbox sales improved is false.
 
Crayon said:
Ars was a really great site. :/ Sad about the quality nowadays.
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Gaming is a very small portion of the content that Ars puts out.

It's still a fantastic site where I get all my in-depth tech and Science news/features/discussions.
 
Brad Grenz said:
Irrespective of the math or charts, where is he getting the data for Xbox sales increasing? Orland's figures are higher than most reliable estimates and MS stopped publishing numbers. I think his very premise that Xbox sales improved is false.
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It is false. Or at the very least, he could be off by as much as a couple of million. You'd think that using imaginary numbers would undermine an entire article, but miraculously, it doesn't even affect this one!

Nightengale said:
Analysis for the sake of analysis.
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Not really. By necessity, analysis has to be based on data and this article most certainly isn't.
 
Kieli said:
Gaming is a very small portion of the content that Ars puts out.

It's still a fantastic site where I get all my in-depth tech and Science news/features/discussions.
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Yeah, I love reading Ars for literally everything but gaming. Siracusa's reviews of OS X are the standard by which other tech sites are judged, imo. But their gaming coverage just doesn't meet their usually high standards - and not just with Orland, but with Kuchera before him.
 
An article written about sales that goes into purely unrealistic territory to make points and then those points are said to be idiocy by the very person doing the article

So the point of this article was what exactly?
 
Jesus everyone only looked at the picture.

Of course, if current annual sales rate increases continue, the Xbox One would eventually overtake the PS4 in the annual sales race. However, that process would take quite a while. Fig. 7 above shows just how long, projecting out how annual sales would look if the PS4 continued to increase annual sales by about 17 percent a year and the Xbox One continued to improve at about 25.5 percent annually.

It's important to note that console sales patterns decidedly do not work in this way, and it's a bit ridiculous to expect annual sales to continue increasing in this kind of parabolic curve. Still, it's interesting to see that based on current trends, the Xbox One wouldn't start to outsell the PS4 on an annual basis until 2024. At that point, Sony would have continued building up a significant life-to-date lead of over 50 million consoles worldwide before Microsoft would be able to stop the bleeding (Fig. 8).
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He clearly states that the extrapolating doesn't actually apply in the real world.

The article specifically states that the "trend would have to be maintained for years" to even have a hope of overtaking PS4, to paraphrase.

And it fully acknowledges that this will not happen.

Learn to read GAF!
 
Mentok said:
Such a perfect .gif to sum this up. I know they admit their process of extrapolation wasn't done right...but then why bother in the first place?
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It's to illustrate just how long it would take even in the brightest possible setting, and actually an unrealistic one, for Xbone to overtake PS4.

It's saying it would take 10 years of unbelievable performance of sales for Xbone just to even catch up to PS4 if both continued on the same year-on-year increases in sales (which won't happen).

That in itself illustrates just how large the lead the PS4 already has over the Xbone.

It contrasts how large the discrepancy is between the absolute difference in sales between PS4 and Xbone versus the percent increase in sales of Xbone year over year.

Because the year-on-year increase for Xbone is rather very good, it's showing how unrealistic a rate of sales it would need to catch up to PS4 anyway, thus enforcing the point that PS4 has such a large absolute lead that won't be overcome.

Basically it is a math thing, if you don't like playing with numbers to illustrate a point, it's not going to work for you. It's not a literal thing.
 
ocean said:
Geez some guys here are dumb.

The whole point of the article is that even assuming absolute best case scenario for Xbox, it isn't gonna catch up. Which is, outside some major black swan, a fair assessment. The graphs are meant to show how even under extreme circumstances the gap won't be closed.

Anyone who reads this as "by 2024 XBO will be on top" has severe reading comprehension issues and should feel bad.
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No shit, Shelock! This article is so stupid, one has to wonder the reasons that would push any human being to write it and share it with the world.
 
potatohead said:
It's to illustrate just how long it would take even in the brightest possible setting, and actually an unrealistic one, for Xbone to overtake PS4.

It's saying it would take 10 years of unbelievable performance of sales for Xbone just to even catch up to PS4 if both continued on the same year-on-year increases in sales (which won't happen).

That in itself illustrates just how large the lead the PS4 already has over the Xbone.

It contrasts how large the discrepancy is between the absolute difference in sales between PS4 and Xbone versus the percent increase in sales of Xbone year over year.

Because the year-on-year increase for Xbone is rather very good, it's showing how unrealistic a rate of sales it would need to catch up to PS4 anyway, thus enforcing the point that PS4 has such a large absolute lead that won't be overcome.

Basically it is a math thing, if you don't like playing with numbers to illustrate a point, it's not going to work for you. It's not a literal thing.
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No, it is a stupid thing. It is the most idiotic case of extrapolation i have ever come across. The premise is ridiculous; the math is ridiculous; the whole effort is utterly IQ crushing..so much so that one has to scoff at the article.
Either that Kyle is a prankster who has a lot of idle time to kill, or he is deeply affected by the results of this generation and secretly harbors the hope of seeing a major trend shift...and has a lot of time to spare.
 
potatohead said:
Jesus everyone only looked at the picture.



He clearly states that the extrapolating doesn't actually apply in the real world.

The article specifically states that the "trend would have to be maintained for years" to even have a hope of overtaking PS4, to paraphrase.

And it fully acknowledges that this will not happen.

Learn to read GAF!
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His bullshit extrapolation is based on numbers plucked from his arse combined with this nothing statement:

Determining sales information for the Xbox One was harder than ever this quarter, as Microsoft didn't break out shipment numbers for the Xbox One or the Xbox family as a whole in its latest report. The only hint about the company's console sales came in an off-hand sentence saying that "Xbox hardware revenue decreased 17 percent, mainly due to lower volumes of Xbox 360 consoles sold."

Of course it's not going to happen as he's a grasping fantasist. The defense that he's making things up to prove even when making things up a fantasy cannot occur is some real circular reasoning and reflects poorly on it's advocates.

His bias are startling clear when his closing paragraph implies the only "actor" with agency in the market is Microsoft, apparently Sony and Nintendo are mere ciphers/dependent variables.
 
godelsmetric said:
You're supposed to laugh, in a sense. It's showing the impossibility of the Xbone overtaking the PS4.
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So, let me get this straight, the guy who cautioned against hyping up a fast selling PS4 at launch, produces articles trying to whitewash sales difference between the two consoles, and usually creates nice charts with skewed proportions and over optimistic shipment estimations for a certain console... Well, this guy is essentially writing an apology piece showing in a very nonsensical manner that such console could not really catch up? It does not add up.

Worldwide sales even after a massive price reduction and bundling strategy, MS not reporting their shipment numbers anymore, and Xbox's chief saying that beating Sony in sales is not their biggest priority and that the gap my not close are not rational enough arguments to reach the same conclusion and need that kind of article made? Really?

Thanks to Bastables, this line in the article is also telling:
Bastables said:
Xbox Division Chief Phil Spencer might say that Microsoft isn't that concerned with the Xbox One's relative market share, but for anyone who is, the road ahead continues to look difficult.
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ocean said:
Geez some guys here are dumb.

The whole point of the article is that even assuming absolute best case scenario for Xbox, it isn't gonna catch up. Which is, outside some major black swan, a fair assessment. The graphs are meant to show how even under extreme circumstances the gap won't be closed.

Anyone who reads this as "by 2024 XBO will be on top" has severe reading comprehension issues and should feel bad.
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There are better case scenarios he could have entertained. Sony's PS4 factories get blown up by MrXMedia in a crazy effort to turn the tide, PlayStation products get banned in EU due to World War II related propaganda, etc... Once you step into the realm of not having to make sense you can have plenty of fun :).
 
I feel sad now. I actually defended Kyle Orland the other day by saying, that he wasn't the first guy to be wrong on the internet.

And then he goes and writes this. What the fuck.
 
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