I realize that this article is about Third Party publishers, but 90% of the time I see EA refered to as the "Largest Publisher in the World" and wonder whether people have access to statistics I don't have access to.
Though how much of an advantage is being the first party publisher? Okay so you know your own system well (If you have decent internal communication) but you can't develop for any other system which reduces what you can do (Depending on how you count porting one 'game' to different systems...)
In general, being a first party publisher doesn't provide much of an advantage if you look at the market share of Sony, Microsoft and Sega (when they were still a first party publisher). I could be wrong, but I believe it was Sega who said something along the lines of "The biggest problem with releasing software on Nintendo's platforms is that you have to compete directly against Nintendo's software"; the implication of the statement was that only really good third party games sold well on Nintendo systems whereas an average game would sell well on the PS2/XBox.
"Our recent study on "next-gen purchase intent" showed that the PS3 enjoys the highest future purchase intent of all three systems."
Make 1,000 random phone calls and ask people "Which of the following next generation gaming systems do you intend to purchase, Sony's Playstation 3, Microsoft's XBox 360 or Nintendo's Wii?" and I'm willing to bet that most people who answer with (something like) "Oh, I own a PS2 so I'm going to buy a PS3!"
Now, if you created a selection of qualifying questions to see how informed people were and I imagine that the purchase intent for the Playstation 3 would be smaller.
The only reason I say this is that I was in EBgames looking for a nunchuck earlier this week and I saw a guy walk in and ask if they had the PS3 for sale (I think he was looking for it as a present for his children); it was explained to him that it wouldn't be readily available until after Christmas and would cost $650 (Canadian) and the man responded with something along the lines of "Why are you charging $200 more than anywhere else" not understanding that the PS3 actually cost $650 (as compared to the $450 the PS2 launched at).
Just as a question, why does no one ever consider Nintendo the top publisher?
In 2006 Nintendo has sold 25,572,000 pieces of software in Japan (48% of all games sold), and 14,704,000 pieces of software in North America (20% of all games sold). EA has sold 16,693,000 pieces of software in North America and very few pieces of software ing Japan.
Am I missing something, did EA publish 2 to 3 times as much software as Nintendo in the rest of the world or do people automatically discount first party publishers?
They can probably take the brunt of the parts shortages and bad vibes up front by riding on the PS2's shoulders for at least another two years.
From a market share and revinue perspective Sony will be fine for a couple of years with how the PS2 is performing. The question is how healthy will the PS3 be in 24-36 months (from a software line-up) if it is consistently outsold by both the Wii and XBox 360 (hypothetically speaking of course)? When has a console that is trailing (by a wide margin) ever recovered to become the market leader?
I have seen analysts spout garbage like "The PSP will dominate the Nintendo DS starting in 2006" and "The Nokia N-Gage will reduce Nintendo to a fraction of their handheld marketshare". All analysts do is make up predictions and try to justify them without any real understanding on why people buy the products they do, and most of the time they're wrong. I'm willing to bet that the average slashdotter has more accurate predictions than these analysts.
I generally agree with you that an "Average" doesn't really tell that much about the quality of a line-up, and I think that the quantity of games within a certain ranking would probably tell you more about a software line-up
The Wii had 1 game at 90% or higher, 5 games that were 80%-89%, 7 games that were 70%-79%, 4 games that were 60%-70% and 3 games below 60%; I may have made a mistake with the handful of virtual console games mixed in the Gamerankings list.
The PS3 5 games that were 80%-89%, 5 games that were 70%-79%, 1 games that were 60%-69%, and 2 games below 60%.
Between the 2 I would say that the Wii had 13 games that were playable (70% or better) whereas the PS3 only had 10 that were playable; the Wii also had 7 crappy games (below 70%) whereas the PS3 had 3 crappy games. The Wii's average is lower even though it had more playable games.
In most cases your interpreted code (from C# or Java) will run between 50%-75% of the speed of hand optimized Assembly or C/C++ code. The real problems (currently) with interpreted languages is they do not provide a standard interface for graphics cards (which prevents taking advantage of the GPU to produce your graphics) and garbage collection is awful at handling memory management; if there was a standard Graphics inteface in Java which allowed you to program in OpenGL, and Java allowed for "hints" to tell it when to free memory you could (probably) produce a game that looked like Half-Life 2 on a pretty average PC.
Now, games have been known to push hardware but at one point in time an office suite was also know for pushing the limits of hardware. If you look at what it costs to produce a XBox 360/PS3/PC game currently, developers can not afford to continue to push the hardware; consider that since the NES there has been a standard 4 times increase in development cost for each generation, games went from costing $5 Million (on average) on the XBox/PS2/Gamecube to $20 Million on the PS3/XBox 360/PC, how many games can cost $80 Million and still turn a profit?
It's actually more complicated than that being that many/most PC games use DirectX to handle sound, input and (possibly) networking...
If you plan ahead and use OpenGL and OpenAL it shouldn't be too costly to port a game (probably only a month or so of work for a couple of developers) but until there are much better open source libraries (beyond OpenGL and OpenAL) you will require more than a recompile to get your game to work on Linux.
In the long run I imagine that this will not be an issue...
In 10 years computers will be (about) 100 times as powerful as they are today and it will be too expensive to create games which really push these systems to their limits. When that happens I expect most game engines will move to be programmed in Java (or another interpreted language) in order to improve the portability between Handhelds, Consoles and the PC; once a game is developed in Java (or another interpreted language) it should be reasonably easy to port it to Linux/Mac.
I agree that a service like this is the future, but I think that the future is further off than people expect...
There are two things that are preventing the adoption of any HD movie format; few people own a HDTV, in particular a HDTV that is high enough quality to notice the improvment between HD and 480p; and there is so little HD content that people really don't notice the difference between HD and 480p. I know people will disagree with me about this but until every broadcast is in 720p/1080i and everyone has the equipment to take advantage of that resolution people will automatically readjust to 480p and not notice the quality difference.
In about 2010 I expect that most people are going to be going crazy looking for HD content, if ISP bandwith is high enough and these services are inexpensive and mature enough I expect that the optical movie format will become obsolete.
Why do they even have a fixed period of time before a movie is deleted from a person's hard-drive?
The XBox 360's hard-drive is 20GBs which (should) allow for (about) 20 to 40 SD movies or 5 to 10 HD movies; eventually they will have to 'return' the movie (that is delete it) or they will run out of hard-drive space. Currently most rental places have eliminated late fees (with a small restocking fee after a week), and online services have no time limitations, so why would I pay the same ammount and be put in a far more limited system?
I suspect that Nintendo would be very careful about what code was running on their system for fear that it could be exploited to produce a soft-mod to allow for pirated games to be run.
Imagine if a buffer overflow error was found in the emulator, which allowed for unsigned code to be run, so the hacker could replace your firmware which allowed for booting from a usb hard-drive...
I'm not positive I know what you're asking, but I think I'll give it a try...
I could be wrong but I think the difference between what I'm describing and Fair Play is that Fair Play takes an unsigned data format and signs it to be specific to your particular account/machine and there is nothing that prevents you from using an unsigned version of that data with your account/machine; now, Nintendo could design a system such that it will only play games that were both signed by Nintendo (to make them an official rom) and signed for your specific machine. In Nintendo's case, stripping the per-account signing would give you an officially signed Nintendo rom but that would not be playable on an unmodified machine unless you had access to the account based signing key (by modifying the system you'd be attempting to remove the requirement that the game had to be signed per machine, or for homebrew that it was even signed at all).
They would probably be decripted durring runtime but we don't know whether this would be stored in memory or whether this memory would be easily readable from outside the CPU... Being that the CPU was designed with signed emulation in mind, the Wii CPU could (theoritically) take in encrypted data/instructions from memory, decrypt them into registers/on chip memory, re-encrypt the output and store that in memory. Ultimately, it is beyond me (or anyone I know) to break a system like that but I'm sure there is someone who could.
Something I would like to see someone try is to redirect to a page that contains a movie file format which the Wii supports (like MOV); this could be the easiest way to convert your Wii to a media center extender (with crappy file support).
I find it doubtful that Nintendo would do this. This would be putting the private signing key on a theoretically publically accessable network. You wouldn't believe how tightly guarded signing processes are - it's normally only 2 or 3 people in the world that have access to it. The implications for are far too great for them to even contemplate that approach. But I do agree with you that it's not going to be easily cracked, by any means.
Not really...
If Nintendo can keep their super private signing key private and sign the rom before it gets to the distribution service.
Now, for every console you can generate a public/private key pair where the console holds the private key (without knowing what the public key is) and the service holds the public key (and keeps it secret). The result would be that you'd have to hack the online service in order to get the public keys to transfer the already signed rom to another console; not the easiest thing to do.
If you crack the console on the other hand this can all be bypassed though...
Once the Virtual Arcade system has been worked out, someone will put up a custom server where you can download the games for 0 points. All you'll have to do is point wii.com (or whichever A/AAA records are needed) to their server.
It seems like this system will be hacked rather easily.:/
Well, being that Nintendo is not stupid I suspect that ever virtual console game is signed to prevent copying; on top of that (being that each game is only usable on one particular system) it is possible that Nintendo signs the signed code for each console when you buy a game. Now, unless the system is physically cracked, I think that it is nearly impossible to break this system.
According to Microsoft, the impressive subscription rate is because more than 85 percent of Gears players play one of the game's various multiplayer modes, which include full campaign co-op.
Is it surprising that a game that is meant to apeal to hard-core gamers sells to people who like to play a game in the way that hard-core gamers like to play their games?
I may be wrong, but I think it would be more impressive to hear that 50% (or more) of people who got the free XBox live subscription with their XBox 360 used it and of those 50% (or more) continued paying for the service when their subscription ended.
One thing a shortage can do is enable a company to be delusional about the demand for the product that they're selling. I'm going to use cars as my example...
Suppose that this year GM produced a brand new supercharged luxury compact sedan which they sold for $50,000 that was based on the Cobalt; and suppose that GM only produced 25,000 of these cars that sold out (almost) instantly. A marketing drone in GM suddenly believes that there is a massive market for this car and decides that it is important to increase production to 1,000,000 for the next model year; in that model year the company sells 125,000 before they begin (drastically) reducing the price in order to move the excess inventory.
125,000 units would have been a respectable number of cars to sell in a model year but being that 875,000 went unsold it would be remembered as a failure (and the model would be discontinued).
Now, I'm not saying that this will happen to Sony, but 6 months down the line (when the supply of units meets the demand for the units) Sony could be thinking that they have the next big product on their hands where they really had a dud...
At the end of all this, its just Sony's to lose. They are the reigning KING of consoles. Anyone can spew the facts of Xbox this or Nintendo that, but at the end Sony controls 65%+ of the console gaming pie.
Well, if you include handhelds they control less than 50% of the hardware market; when it comes to software Nintendo sells about 4 times as much software as Sony does.
This lack of shortages does not matter. If Sony pushes out PS3 next year this will be a thing of the past. Sure they may lose market share to Nintendo and MS, but unless there is massive failure on their PS3 I don't see anyone knocking them off their throne too soon.
I don't think you understand what time of year this is...
You see those amazingly large spikes that represent about half of all system sales that are exactly 12 months apart? Yes, that represents the 4th quarter of every year where (most) major purchases are made. Sony's shortage at this time of year means that they're sacrificing a ton of sales thereby reducing their market share which will reduce the number of exclusives (which will further reduce market share). Add to that the delay in Europe and there is no chance that Sony's sales will look nearly as good as either Nintendo's or Microsoft's.
spoken like a true fanboy! shortage=high demand think about it.
No, Shortage means that Supply Demand!
When you have no shortage and can sell 4 Million units you have high demand, when only 10,000 people want something and you supply 1,000 units you still have a shortage regardless of having a small demand.
In my first year ecconomics class (years ago) my professor when into a rant on the comparison between Capatalism and Communism; this usually went on for 10-15 minutes (depending on the class) and one section of the rant was about choice.
Essentially, his example in the difference in choice was the breakfast isle in most shopping markets; in a Communist country you'll have one choice "Communist O's" regardles of whether you like them or not whereas in a capatalist society there will be boxes of every shape colour and size. The end result is that the choice capatalism provides makes it very difficult to find what you like, but unlike communism you can actually find what you like.
Personally, I would rather have confusing choice rather than have to eat a bunch of bland tasting Communist O's that have a picture of Stalin on the box.
ADHD is way over diagnosed, and drugs are over prescribed, but that doesn't mean that there aren't people who have ADHD.
Its a well known fact that most children with "ADHD" can be effectively treated by changing their diet, adding structure to their life and ensuring they get a good night's sleep. There are children that (regardless of how you change their lifestyle) do not respond to other forms of treatment for "ADHD", in this case the children probably do have a condition that could be refered to as ADHD; the question is, is this actually a problem?
We consider "ADHD" a problem because our (Western Society) school system is largely based on the Socratic method of learning (lectures); another way of teaching could (possibly) have better results in dealing with children who have ADHD.
It's reassuring to see that pharmaceutical companies can make a pill to solve every problem, even ones that weren't a real problem before they came up with a pill.
Sounds like someone hasn't done a Raid in WoW yet...
Supply is the greatest challenge facing both of these systems in the Console War largely because they both can (probably) sell any system they can ship because of how high the demand for the systems are; with it being "Christmas" and they're shiny and new they're in demand.
Typically, in the November/December timeframe a system will sell 4 to 6 times as many units as it will sell in any other 2 months in a year ( http://www.vgcharts.org/usaconscomps.php?name1=PS2 &name2=&type=0 ); not having enough units at this time of year can be a mistake that will take a year to recover from.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize that this article is about Third Party publishers, but 90% of the time I see EA refered to as the "Largest Publisher in the World" and wonder whether people have access to statistics I don't have access to.
Though how much of an advantage is being the first party publisher? Okay so you know your own system well (If you have decent internal communication) but you can't develop for any other system which reduces what you can do (Depending on how you count porting one 'game' to different systems...)
In general, being a first party publisher doesn't provide much of an advantage if you look at the market share of Sony, Microsoft and Sega (when they were still a first party publisher). I could be wrong, but I believe it was Sega who said something along the lines of "The biggest problem with releasing software on Nintendo's platforms is that you have to compete directly against Nintendo's software"; the implication of the statement was that only really good third party games sold well on Nintendo systems whereas an average game would sell well on the PS2/XBox.
"Our recent study on "next-gen purchase intent" showed that the PS3 enjoys the highest future purchase intent of all three systems."
Make 1,000 random phone calls and ask people "Which of the following next generation gaming systems do you intend to purchase, Sony's Playstation 3, Microsoft's XBox 360 or Nintendo's Wii?" and I'm willing to bet that most people who answer with (something like) "Oh, I own a PS2 so I'm going to buy a PS3!"
Now, if you created a selection of qualifying questions to see how informed people were and I imagine that the purchase intent for the Playstation 3 would be smaller.
The only reason I say this is that I was in EBgames looking for a nunchuck earlier this week and I saw a guy walk in and ask if they had the PS3 for sale (I think he was looking for it as a present for his children); it was explained to him that it wouldn't be readily available until after Christmas and would cost $650 (Canadian) and the man responded with something along the lines of "Why are you charging $200 more than anywhere else" not understanding that the PS3 actually cost $650 (as compared to the $450 the PS2 launched at).
Just as a question, why does no one ever consider Nintendo the top publisher?
In 2006 Nintendo has sold 25,572,000 pieces of software in Japan (48% of all games sold), and 14,704,000 pieces of software in North America (20% of all games sold). EA has sold 16,693,000 pieces of software in North America and very few pieces of software ing Japan.
Am I missing something, did EA publish 2 to 3 times as much software as Nintendo in the rest of the world or do people automatically discount first party publishers?
They can probably take the brunt of the parts shortages and bad vibes up front by riding on the PS2's shoulders for at least another two years.
From a market share and revinue perspective Sony will be fine for a couple of years with how the PS2 is performing. The question is how healthy will the PS3 be in 24-36 months (from a software line-up) if it is consistently outsold by both the Wii and XBox 360 (hypothetically speaking of course)? When has a console that is trailing (by a wide margin) ever recovered to become the market leader?
Seriously, what do Analysts know?
I have seen analysts spout garbage like "The PSP will dominate the Nintendo DS starting in 2006" and "The Nokia N-Gage will reduce Nintendo to a fraction of their handheld marketshare". All analysts do is make up predictions and try to justify them without any real understanding on why people buy the products they do, and most of the time they're wrong. I'm willing to bet that the average slashdotter has more accurate predictions than these analysts.
I generally agree with you that an "Average" doesn't really tell that much about the quality of a line-up, and I think that the quantity of games within a certain ranking would probably tell you more about a software line-up
The Wii had 1 game at 90% or higher, 5 games that were 80%-89%, 7 games that were 70%-79%, 4 games that were 60%-70% and 3 games below 60%; I may have made a mistake with the handful of virtual console games mixed in the Gamerankings list.
The PS3 5 games that were 80%-89%, 5 games that were 70%-79%, 1 games that were 60%-69%, and 2 games below 60%.
Between the 2 I would say that the Wii had 13 games that were playable (70% or better) whereas the PS3 only had 10 that were playable; the Wii also had 7 crappy games (below 70%) whereas the PS3 had 3 crappy games. The Wii's average is lower even though it had more playable games.
In most cases your interpreted code (from C# or Java) will run between 50%-75% of the speed of hand optimized Assembly or C/C++ code. The real problems (currently) with interpreted languages is they do not provide a standard interface for graphics cards (which prevents taking advantage of the GPU to produce your graphics) and garbage collection is awful at handling memory management; if there was a standard Graphics inteface in Java which allowed you to program in OpenGL, and Java allowed for "hints" to tell it when to free memory you could (probably) produce a game that looked like Half-Life 2 on a pretty average PC.
Now, games have been known to push hardware but at one point in time an office suite was also know for pushing the limits of hardware. If you look at what it costs to produce a XBox 360/PS3/PC game currently, developers can not afford to continue to push the hardware; consider that since the NES there has been a standard 4 times increase in development cost for each generation, games went from costing $5 Million (on average) on the XBox/PS2/Gamecube to $20 Million on the PS3/XBox 360/PC, how many games can cost $80 Million and still turn a profit?
It's actually more complicated than that being that many/most PC games use DirectX to handle sound, input and (possibly) networking ...
If you plan ahead and use OpenGL and OpenAL it shouldn't be too costly to port a game (probably only a month or so of work for a couple of developers) but until there are much better open source libraries (beyond OpenGL and OpenAL) you will require more than a recompile to get your game to work on Linux.
In the long run I imagine that this will not be an issue ...
In 10 years computers will be (about) 100 times as powerful as they are today and it will be too expensive to create games which really push these systems to their limits. When that happens I expect most game engines will move to be programmed in Java (or another interpreted language) in order to improve the portability between Handhelds, Consoles and the PC; once a game is developed in Java (or another interpreted language) it should be reasonably easy to port it to Linux/Mac.
I agree that a service like this is the future, but I think that the future is further off than people expect ...
There are two things that are preventing the adoption of any HD movie format; few people own a HDTV, in particular a HDTV that is high enough quality to notice the improvment between HD and 480p; and there is so little HD content that people really don't notice the difference between HD and 480p. I know people will disagree with me about this but until every broadcast is in 720p/1080i and everyone has the equipment to take advantage of that resolution people will automatically readjust to 480p and not notice the quality difference.
In about 2010 I expect that most people are going to be going crazy looking for HD content, if ISP bandwith is high enough and these services are inexpensive and mature enough I expect that the optical movie format will become obsolete.
Why do they even have a fixed period of time before a movie is deleted from a person's hard-drive?
The XBox 360's hard-drive is 20GBs which (should) allow for (about) 20 to 40 SD movies or 5 to 10 HD movies; eventually they will have to 'return' the movie (that is delete it) or they will run out of hard-drive space. Currently most rental places have eliminated late fees (with a small restocking fee after a week), and online services have no time limitations, so why would I pay the same ammount and be put in a far more limited system?
I suspect that Nintendo would be very careful about what code was running on their system for fear that it could be exploited to produce a soft-mod to allow for pirated games to be run.
...
Imagine if a buffer overflow error was found in the emulator, which allowed for unsigned code to be run, so the hacker could replace your firmware which allowed for booting from a usb hard-drive
I'm not positive I know what you're asking, but I think I'll give it a try ...
I could be wrong but I think the difference between what I'm describing and Fair Play is that Fair Play takes an unsigned data format and signs it to be specific to your particular account/machine and there is nothing that prevents you from using an unsigned version of that data with your account/machine; now, Nintendo could design a system such that it will only play games that were both signed by Nintendo (to make them an official rom) and signed for your specific machine. In Nintendo's case, stripping the per-account signing would give you an officially signed Nintendo rom but that would not be playable on an unmodified machine unless you had access to the account based signing key (by modifying the system you'd be attempting to remove the requirement that the game had to be signed per machine, or for homebrew that it was even signed at all).
They would probably be decripted durring runtime but we don't know whether this would be stored in memory or whether this memory would be easily readable from outside the CPU ... Being that the CPU was designed with signed emulation in mind, the Wii CPU could (theoritically) take in encrypted data/instructions from memory, decrypt them into registers/on chip memory, re-encrypt the output and store that in memory. Ultimately, it is beyond me (or anyone I know) to break a system like that but I'm sure there is someone who could.
Something I would like to see someone try is to redirect to a page that contains a movie file format which the Wii supports (like MOV); this could be the easiest way to convert your Wii to a media center extender (with crappy file support).
I find it doubtful that Nintendo would do this. This would be putting the private signing key on a theoretically publically accessable network. You wouldn't believe how tightly guarded signing processes are - it's normally only 2 or 3 people in the world that have access to it. The implications for are far too great for them to even contemplate that approach. But I do agree with you that it's not going to be easily cracked, by any means.
...
...
Not really
If Nintendo can keep their super private signing key private and sign the rom before it gets to the distribution service.
Now, for every console you can generate a public/private key pair where the console holds the private key (without knowing what the public key is) and the service holds the public key (and keeps it secret). The result would be that you'd have to hack the online service in order to get the public keys to transfer the already signed rom to another console; not the easiest thing to do.
If you crack the console on the other hand this can all be bypassed though
Once the Virtual Arcade system has been worked out, someone will put up a custom server where you can download the games for 0 points. All you'll have to do is point wii.com (or whichever A/AAA records are needed) to their server.
:/
It seems like this system will be hacked rather easily.
Well, being that Nintendo is not stupid I suspect that ever virtual console game is signed to prevent copying; on top of that (being that each game is only usable on one particular system) it is possible that Nintendo signs the signed code for each console when you buy a game. Now, unless the system is physically cracked, I think that it is nearly impossible to break this system.
So ... what's next?
Will we be getting a news story about a Hacker who had installed the Wiis web-browser on his PC by going to http://www.opera.com/ ?
According to Microsoft, the impressive subscription rate is because more than 85 percent of Gears players play one of the game's various multiplayer modes, which include full campaign co-op.
Is it surprising that a game that is meant to apeal to hard-core gamers sells to people who like to play a game in the way that hard-core gamers like to play their games?
I may be wrong, but I think it would be more impressive to hear that 50% (or more) of people who got the free XBox live subscription with their XBox 360 used it and of those 50% (or more) continued paying for the service when their subscription ended.
One thing a shortage can do is enable a company to be delusional about the demand for the product that they're selling. I'm going to use cars as my example ...
...
Suppose that this year GM produced a brand new supercharged luxury compact sedan which they sold for $50,000 that was based on the Cobalt; and suppose that GM only produced 25,000 of these cars that sold out (almost) instantly. A marketing drone in GM suddenly believes that there is a massive market for this car and decides that it is important to increase production to 1,000,000 for the next model year; in that model year the company sells 125,000 before they begin (drastically) reducing the price in order to move the excess inventory.
125,000 units would have been a respectable number of cars to sell in a model year but being that 875,000 went unsold it would be remembered as a failure (and the model would be discontinued).
Now, I'm not saying that this will happen to Sony, but 6 months down the line (when the supply of units meets the demand for the units) Sony could be thinking that they have the next big product on their hands where they really had a dud
At the end of all this, its just Sony's to lose. They are the reigning KING of consoles. Anyone can spew the facts of Xbox this or Nintendo that, but at the end Sony controls 65%+ of the console gaming pie.
...
2 &name2=&type=0& name2=&type=0& name2=&type=0
Well, if you include handhelds they control less than 50% of the hardware market; when it comes to software Nintendo sells about 4 times as much software as Sony does.
This lack of shortages does not matter. If Sony pushes out PS3 next year this will be a thing of the past. Sure they may lose market share to Nintendo and MS, but unless there is massive failure on their PS3 I don't see anyone knocking them off their throne too soon.
I don't think you understand what time of year this is
http://www.vgcharts.org/usaconscomps.php?name1=PS
http://www.vgcharts.org/usaconscomps.php?name1=GC
http://www.vgcharts.org/usaconscomps.php?name1=XB
You see those amazingly large spikes that represent about half of all system sales that are exactly 12 months apart? Yes, that represents the 4th quarter of every year where (most) major purchases are made. Sony's shortage at this time of year means that they're sacrificing a ton of sales thereby reducing their market share which will reduce the number of exclusives (which will further reduce market share). Add to that the delay in Europe and there is no chance that Sony's sales will look nearly as good as either Nintendo's or Microsoft's.
spoken like a true fanboy! shortage=high demand think about it.
No, Shortage means that Supply Demand!
When you have no shortage and can sell 4 Million units you have high demand, when only 10,000 people want something and you supply 1,000 units you still have a shortage regardless of having a small demand.
In my first year ecconomics class (years ago) my professor when into a rant on the comparison between Capatalism and Communism; this usually went on for 10-15 minutes (depending on the class) and one section of the rant was about choice.
Essentially, his example in the difference in choice was the breakfast isle in most shopping markets; in a Communist country you'll have one choice "Communist O's" regardles of whether you like them or not whereas in a capatalist society there will be boxes of every shape colour and size. The end result is that the choice capatalism provides makes it very difficult to find what you like, but unlike communism you can actually find what you like.
Personally, I would rather have confusing choice rather than have to eat a bunch of bland tasting Communist O's that have a picture of Stalin on the box.
ADHD is a myth.
ADHD is way over diagnosed, and drugs are over prescribed, but that doesn't mean that there aren't people who have ADHD.
Its a well known fact that most children with "ADHD" can be effectively treated by changing their diet, adding structure to their life and ensuring they get a good night's sleep. There are children that (regardless of how you change their lifestyle) do not respond to other forms of treatment for "ADHD", in this case the children probably do have a condition that could be refered to as ADHD; the question is, is this actually a problem?
We consider "ADHD" a problem because our (Western Society) school system is largely based on the Socratic method of learning (lectures); another way of teaching could (possibly) have better results in dealing with children who have ADHD.
It's reassuring to see that pharmaceutical companies can make a pill to solve every problem, even ones that weren't a real problem before they came up with a pill.
...
Sounds like someone hasn't done a Raid in WoW yet
Supply is the greatest challenge facing both of these systems in the Console War largely because they both can (probably) sell any system they can ship because of how high the demand for the systems are; with it being "Christmas" and they're shiny and new they're in demand.
2 &name2=&type=0 ); not having enough units at this time of year can be a mistake that will take a year to recover from.
Typically, in the November/December timeframe a system will sell 4 to 6 times as many units as it will sell in any other 2 months in a year ( http://www.vgcharts.org/usaconscomps.php?name1=PS