I would imagine that one would have futures contracts that expire month to month or week to week. The most valuable futures contracts would be those that correlate to what the market thinks the actual release date will be.
It would function just like the futures markets do now I expect. Let's say there were futures contracts for cataclysm to sell 10 million copies in October, 10 million copies in November and 10 million copies in December. If most folks thought that Cataclysm would be released in November, then that month's futures contracts should be the highest priced of the three, with the December contracts being slightly lower and the October contracts being lower still.
Thanks for both replies. Very clear. I only have one comment to add.
"and also possibility for games to miss their announced launch dates"
It seems to me that this is the primary reason to _support_ expansion of futures contracts. My understanding of this Exchange is that it is most useful as a predictive market. Why not leverage its predictive power to actual release dates rather than just sales figures.
I'm not going to go complain to admins about any of this just yet. I'm still just trying to get my head around this place.
Due to limited sales data from NPD and also possibility for games to miss their announced launch dates, having futures many months in advance has too many problems at the moment.
Also it would tie up DKP and for players without 40 million DKP spare, that would make it harder for them to invest in other games until those futures cashed out.
But as oznerol suggests, you can ask the the admin to list more futures if you believe a game will definitely launch in that month.
CoD7 and Halo 5 will likely launch on time and annual games always launch at a similar time of year.
PC games monthly sales data is not available to the public but you can trade the lifetime sales stock.
And as for why you can't buy September contracts, it's because the site is neglected by the dude who runs it (KultofCows). They need to be added (along with an IPO). It's difficult to add them too far in advance, though, because it's tough to predict what will hit the NPD top 10 (since we don't get hard numbers for games that didn't make the top 5/10).
Use the "Contact Us" form under "Help" to complain if you'd like.
OK I think I understood most of all that already, but you still didn't answer my main question which was, why can't I buy a September contract for any game (like halo 5) right now (or can I and I'm just missing something?)
Secondly, your reply elicited another question, why are futures contracts limited to console games? I am taking this to mean that futures for Warcraft Cataclysm will never be available for trading?
Futures contracts are more a prediction on probable sales data for US retail console games market only.
You guess the sales number for the games and hardware listed for that month and the future is cashed out based on sales data reported by NPD group.
For example, if you believe Halo 5 will sell 5 million copies in September and the listed price is 3 million copies, you can buy that future until the price is closer to your own target estimate or you run out of available DKP.
You can sell the future if you think the current price is too high aswell.
When NPD reports September retail sales data in Mid October, your futures will cash out at the sales figure reported by NPD.
You may make a profit or you may loose a lot of money as a result.
Thanks. So what about futures contracts? Am I missing something or am I limited to only buy contracts for August? It seems like the ability to buy futures several months out (maybe even years) would be a great predictive tool for release dates.
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http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/1967-Cataclysm-Release-Date-Gathering-XP-Blue-Posts