I'm not arguing with you, btw. In fact, I'm agreeing with most of what you're saying, except that I think you're not taking it far enough.
I'm not sure what you mean specifically here. Maybe explain the methodology you are thinking about a bit more. It sounds like you are saying we should take the incrementally boosts figure and subtract from it the baseline figure (which is what I was advocating), so I must not be understanding your diction here unless you mean to agree with me, heh.
Ehhhhh, not really. Total Demand = Baseline Demand + Incremental Demand. This rule can be applied to any consumer good. Cheese, game consoles, patio sets. Whatever.
Baseline Demand = "Normal" demand of a good driven by Base Price, Distribution (how available a product is), brand marketing, etc. What a product would sell normally.
Incremental Demand = "Abnormal" short-term, elevated demand of a good. This is driven by Promotion (sales), incremental placement (like an end cap or shelf at the front of a store), short-term advertising blitzes.
Think French Bread at your supermarket. Now, French Bread is located in the bakery section of your store, right? You could go over there, where it lives normally, and where there's a sign and a price. The sales of French Bread in this case is "Baseline" demand. Say you sell 10 loaves a day this way.
Now, the baker says, hey, I think I could sell some more French Bread if I put a basket up front near the registers (incremental distribution) and I'll mark it off -25% (price promotion) and make sure that someone announces it's available over the loudpseaker (short-term marketing blitz).
At the end of that day, the store realizes it sold 30 loaves of bread.
Therefore, Total Demand (30 Loaves) = Baseline Demand (10 Loaves) + Incremental Demand (20 Loaves).
The store would have sold 10 loaves by doing nothing. That's the baseline I'm talking about. But it sold 30. So, 10 baseline, 20 incremental.
With Consoles... same idea. If you're comparing May 2016 to May 2015, we first have to determine what the baseline demand would be (considering Base Price, marketing and distribution) and what the incremental demand would be (considering Promotional/Sale Price, short-term marketing and any additional distribution or promotion surrounding something like New Release Software.)
What I'm saying is you can't compare the two periods unless you strip out and measure the factors that impact both Base and Incremental demand, something the available data makes impossible. (Well, maybe not impossible, but certainly pointless).
Sure, but I'm not sure asking about what kind of boost PS4 enjoyed relative to last May requires anything beyond rudimentary analytics.
But when we're talking about such small numbers and small %, the rudimentary analytics really tells us nothing significant.
