Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 378

Spelunky, Unepic, Assassin's Creed 4 DLC, Walking Dead Season 2, Device 6, Botched Predictions 2013, Bold Predictions 2014 and More!

This week Shawn, Elysium, Julian, Cory and Allen look back at their 2013 bold predictions and lay out some new ones for 2014! It's a looooooong show this week. Won't be the new standard, I promise. Also note we had a couple mic problems in the early parts of the show. It'll clear up.

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.

Chairman_Mao's Timestamps
00.02.03 Spelunky (PC Gamer Game of the Year!)
00.05.29 Assassin's Creed IV DLC
00.12.19 The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 1
00.18.22 Europa Universalis IV
00.20.08 Starbound
00.25.16 Hoplite
00.28.49 Unepic
00.32.13 Dark Souls
00.33.57 Device 6
00.37.54 This week's topic; Bold and Botched Predictions!
02.02.48 Your emails!

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outtro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

Spellbound - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 37:23

If - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 2:02:12

Comments

I so love these end of the year shows.
That part with the clip in which Cory says the Steam box is a "bat sh*t crazy idea" was even better than I'd imagined.
Cory does have a point though. With the announcement of those third party boxes, my enthusiasm has definitely been tempered. I already have a (somewhat decent) gaming rig, why would I pay so much to stream content to my living room, when I can just pull a few cables... Wait and see, I guess...

Heh, of course not!! You have to admit you dug your own hole the first time around!
I'm actually *agreeing* with you this time! Ever since they announced those pricey boxes, I've gone from "ooh, this is interesting" to "what?!? That much?!? No way!" I think it was you who said, and with good reason, that people are going to end up building their own. There's just a big disconnect between what we excepted (a rather "light" box to stream from our PC) to what was actually delivered (really beefy machines). At least, that's the impression I've been getting.

Eleima wrote:

Heh, of course not!! You have to admit you dug your own hole the first time around!
I'm actually *agreeing* with you this time! Ever since they announced those pricey boxes, I've gone from "ooh, this is interesting" to "what?!? That much?!? No way!" I think it was you who said, and with good reason, that people are going to end up building their own. There's just a big disconnect between what we excepted (a rather "light" box to stream from our PC) to what was actually delivered (really beefy machines). At least, that's the impression I've been getting.

Make sure to listen to next week's episode, for sure. I have a *lot* to say about what I saw at CES last week.

And you're absolutely right. I may still be digging until I hit China.

Sony and Microsoft sold every single unit of their consoles that they shipped. Every one. They would have sold ZERO more at any price point. This part was a little boneheaded. Was that Julian?

mygaffer wrote:

Sony and Microsoft sold every single unit of their consoles that they shipped. Every one.

Citation needed.

ccesarano wrote:
mygaffer wrote:

Sony and Microsoft sold every single unit of their consoles that they shipped. Every one.

Citation needed.

The only citation needed is the fact that even today a Playstation 4 sells for more than the MSRP. They are now catching up with supplies but both consoles sold out early, were continually out of stock, and were selling for considerably more than MSRP on ebay. Those are all clear signs of a constrained supply or a price that is too low.

mygaffer wrote:
ccesarano wrote:
mygaffer wrote:

Sony and Microsoft sold every single unit of their consoles that they shipped. Every one.

Citation needed.

The only citation needed is the fact that even today a Playstation 4 sells for more than the MSRP. They are now catching up with supplies but both consoles sold out early, were continually out of stock, and were selling for considerably more than MSRP on ebay. Those are all clear signs of a constrained supply or a price that is too low.

If it's a fact then it should clearly have a source, yes? Because last I heard you could still find Xbox Ones on store shelves. Hardly the shelf-clearer that, say, the original Wii was.

And most often, when people are talking sales reports, they're simply talking numbers shipped or numbers sold to retailers.

I'm not saying that you are wrong and that there isn't demand, or in fact that there isn't short supply. I'm just saying it's a pretty bold statement to declare something as fact and not have a source to back it up.

ccesarano wrote:
mygaffer wrote:
ccesarano wrote:
mygaffer wrote:

Sony and Microsoft sold every single unit of their consoles that they shipped. Every one.

Citation needed.

The only citation needed is the fact that even today a Playstation 4 sells for more than the MSRP. They are now catching up with supplies but both consoles sold out early, were continually out of stock, and were selling for considerably more than MSRP on ebay. Those are all clear signs of a constrained supply or a price that is too low.

If it's a fact then it should clearly have a source, yes? Because last I heard you could still find Xbox Ones on store shelves. Hardly the shelf-clearer that, say, the original Wii was.

And most often, when people are talking sales reports, they're simply talking numbers shipped or numbers sold to retailers.

I'm not saying that you are wrong and that there isn't demand, or in fact that there isn't short supply. I'm just saying it's a pretty bold statement to declare something as fact and not have a source to back it up.

Why do you want to get caught up on the semantics? That is one of the most infurianting things, what does that accomplish? I don't have access to Sony or Microsoft's sales figures but the market speaks for itself. Only now are consoles becoming more accessible. The price was not too high, the price is right around cost, and the idea that the price of the consoles should have been lower at launch, the time where the hardcore will buy almost regardless of the price, when the companies are projecting that they will be supply constrained anyway, that is preposterous.
Here is a quote from some analyst. Maybe that will make you happy.
"We currently estimate sales of about 1 million units a month for the first six months the device is on the market, which could be limited by supply constraints," Brean Capital analyst Todd Mitchell said in a note to clients.

That's not semantics, that's Scientific Method 101. When you write a paper, or do a presentation or whatever, you cite sources with hard data.
Also lovingly known to my colleagues and I as the "back your sh*t up" principle.
Like Cc says, the consoles are selling, no doubt about that. But that's just it, we don't have access to Sony and Microsoft's numbers, so we just don't know.

Eleima wrote:

That's not semantics, that's Scientific Method 101. When you write a paper, or do a presentation or whatever, you cite sources with hard data.
Also lovingly known to my colleagues and I as the "back your sh*t up" principle.
Like Cc says, the consoles are selling, no doubt about that. But that's just it, we don't have access to Sony and Microsoft's numbers, so we just don't know.

It is semantics. I laid out evidence. That is what we have to go on. Just because we don't access to Sony and Microsoft's numbers doesn't mean we can't draw meaningful conclusions.

In my original point I may have been emphatic but I didn't say "that is a fact" (which if you really want to get semantic doesn't mean its true). I gave my position and my reasons for believing so.

Instead of discussing that, in fact he said he was inclined to agree, he latched onto the "cite sources" bullsh*t.

Citing sources is great. I learned all about it in college. I don't have to cite sources to discuss the pricing of these consoles in the one to two paragraphs being written in a video game podcast's comments section.

I'm sorry you feel that way, mygaffer, and I really don't think you're correctly interpreting CC's attitude. Citing sources isn't "bullsh*t", it's what allows us to know exactly what we're talking about and what the circumstances are. At this point, all we're making is conjectures. At very, very best, we have a partial picture of the state of the market. We're drawing conclusions from incomplete data. And that's okay, but you can't really call that "evidence" of anything except of your own biased observation.

I laid out evidence.

You have one quote from an analyst that you didn't even link to the original source.

Perhaps this is just echoes of my days on Wii60 coming through, but a lot of people back then were tossing around "facts" that, with a simple citation, could have been backed up or debunked.

I suppose my issue is that you're calling Julian out for something with no raw data to back your position up, and if it really is merely over whether they could have sold these systems for more or less, it's a theoretical argument and therefore you cannot claim anything as a fact. Seeing as eBay sales are a result of 1) people hoping to repeat the success some assholes had with the Wii, and 2) a niche market of folks desperate for a system, I hardly imagine you can use that as evidence for how the entire market could move if these systems could cost more.

You can't just tell someone they are being boneheaded and then having nothing concrete to back it up. eBay is not concrete, it is anecdotal evidence, and anecdotal evidence is not real evidence. It is someone's experience and perspective, which is not always reflective of how things are.

I apologize that you find me frustrating, but again, you're calling Julian bone-headed about something that's not a fact and without anything that 100% supports your argument. I'm flashing back to poorly framed arguments about who is winning, Microsoft or Sony, back in the Xbox 360 and PS3 launch days, and a lot of those arguments were terrible.

Both systems have sold well enough (Sony seems to have made more units) and it is a 'fact' (by this definition) that Xbox One's have been a little easier to find and buy than PS4s since launch.

ccesarano, I don't think Julian needs you to defend his honor too stridently. He's a big boy ;)

I'm flashing back to poorly framed arguments about who is winning, Microsoft or Sony, back in the Xbox 360 and PS3 launch days, and a lot of those arguments were terrible.

The irony is you're perpetuating the very thing you don't want.

Forget data or sources! I'd argue that we don't have nearly enough hindsight to say who's "won" the console war. If we even need to say that there is one. (said the consoleless, exclusively PC peasant)

Certis wrote:

ccesarano, I don't think Julian needs you to defend his honor too stridently. He's a big boy ;)

But it's always been my life-long dream...

ccesarano wrote:
Certis wrote:

ccesarano, I don't think Julian needs you to defend his honor too stridently. He's a big boy ;)

But it's always been my life-long dream...

Gentlemen... At dawn, by the river. Bring your pistols and your witness.

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

mygaffer wrote:

Sony and Microsoft sold every single unit of their consoles that they shipped. Every one. They would have sold ZERO more at any price point. This part was a little boneheaded. Was that Julian?

There are two possible reasons that MS and Sony were sold out upon the initial release of the consoles.

The first possibility is that they managed to have available for purchase the exact number of consoles that people wanted. Not one more, not one less. The second is that they did not produce enough consoles to meet the demand and that there were people who went to try to get a console and couldn't.

Now, the conditions required for the first to happen are so incredibly precise that the chance that it happened that way is infinitesimal. Much more likely is the second situation, in that they couldn't keep up with demand the first couple of weeks. From a marketing perspective, that is the situation you want as well. The more difficult (but not impossible) it is to find a given console, the more likely that when people see one in the stores, that they will impulse buy it because "it might not be there tomorrow." (Of course, this only applies in the first couple of weeks.) The trick is to make sure that there are not so many people who want the console (and can't get it) that people start saying "I will wait, there will never be any consoles available anytime soon." If I recall correctly, despite being sold out for the first weekend, there were regular announcements of new stock arriving, both on Amazon (or Amazon.ca anyways) and local stores (Best Buy, Future Shop, EB Games)

Why do we have to have a winner? Also, isn't it a little soon to call it? This is like calling a football game in the first 2 minutes of a game.

tboon wrote:

Why do we have to have a winner? Also, isn't it a little soon to call it? This is like calling a football game in the first 2 minutes of a game.

Sounds like someone isn't used to watching the Bears.

I'm calling it: Sega lost this console generation.