Wow, I get banned for two weeks, come back, and I'm confronted with this cluster**** of a thread. What we need here are some charts.
Ahh, this sounds like a challenge:
Oh, but it is. I'm not going to go talking about XBox360 sales in this thread, as it's about Japanese numbers and in Japan the 360's less than irrelevant, but an oft-flawed argument on the part of Sony affectionados is their misuse of linear algebra in analysis of sales data, more specifically their use of the second derivative as an arguing point. Allow me to demonstrate:
Below is the actual chart of the Japanese userbases of the Wii and PS3. This is the chart that matters.
If the streams cross in this chart, then the PS3 has actually overtaken Wii in terms of units sold. This has never happened, and it's never going to happen, Wii is too far ahead, and its lead is growing.
The next chart is the rate of change of the first chart, or the
first derivative. Most of you will know it as the weekly sales chart, and we like to discuss it here because it changes much more rapidly than the first chart and prolonged trends in it can indicate which way the first chart will grow.
If the streams cross in this chart, the lead the Wii has over the PS3 will decrease. This, also, has never happened, and doesn't look likely to do so any time soon.
The third chart I present to you is the rate of change of the second chart, or the
second derivative of the actual console userbases. This chart is often quoted by those trying to scrape some sort of positive news for Sony out of the sales data, although you probably don't recognise it.
If the streams cross in this chart, the rate at which Wii is widening the gap decreases slightly. This is what Sony fans are referring to when PS3's weekly sales go up (which hasn't happened for a while) and Wii's weekly sales go down and they say PS3 is "closing the gap". The "gap" they are referring to is in fact the one on the first derivative chart, not the real gap between the consoles' userbases. This has actually happened quite a few times, but that is more a result of Nintendo's irregular shipment patterns than anything else.
Actually, looking at the above chart, it's not really that good for Sony fans, as Wii is still ahead about half of the time. They'll have to look much deeper into misuse of linear algerba to find the good-news chart they're looking for, and I think I might have found it. The following is the
thirteenth derivative of the top chart, or the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of the actual console userbases.
If the streams cross in this chart, then nothing the **** much happens. And it seems like PS3 is the clear leader when you look at things this way, as it's ahead for 8 of the weeks, compared to only 5 for the Wii. Domination am total, obviously.
But wait, Nintendo fans can misuse mathematics too! Below you'll see the
first integral of the userbases, or the chart for which the userbases themselves represent the rate of change. Look at Wii go, it's powering exponentially ahead of the PS3.
On an ever-so-slightly serious note, though, the above chart may actually be of some use. Consider the hypothesis that, for every week that a developer sees the Wii with a 1 million unit lead on the PS3, he's going to lean a certain amount in the direction of developing for Wii. And, if he were to be looking at one week with the Wii ahead by 10 million, that would have the same effect on his decision as ten weeks where the Wii is ahead by 1 million. Hence, the above graph can be said to portray mindshare in the eyes of developers, with each unit being equivalent to a console having an install base of one for one week. The height of each point on the graph indicates how far developers and publishers have leaned towards that console thus far. Therefore,
if the streams cross in the above chart, PS3 would have not only outsold Wii, but would have cancelled out all the negative mindshare they had received by being trounced so much by the Wii up to this point. There is no hope at all of this ever happening. To put it in perspective, PS3 would need to outsell Wii by 133,587
every week for it to catch up by the end of the year on the above graph.
