Starless, one of the main reasons GTA 4 (PS3) is so incredibly overvalued is that the PS3 is equally overvalued.
I think most people donīt know that in the U.S., the PS3 will most likely sell WORSE than the GameCube. It is already over a quarter million (>3 months of PS3 sales) behind the first 6 months of GC sales, and it is about to fall much further behind. GC sold 916K from May to October of its first full year. The PS3 will sell about half of that without a pricecut! And even with a $100 drop in price AND a pack in game like Resistance, the PS3 will still most likely be unable to keep up with what the GC did, let alone catch up to it. After that the GC started doing even better, and sold 4.3M in its next 14 months. With another $100 price drop (to $400), the PS3 will be lucky to sell 3.2M (which would require more than doubling what itīs currently on pace to sell).
By this point (after 3 holdiday seasons or 26 months) the PS3 will optimistically be at about 5M. (This is assuming a $100 price cut in a couple months and another in about a year, along with a pack-in and many excellent 1st party games.) The PS2 was at 15.7M at that point.
By then, even casual gamers will know that the more expensive PS3 is a relative failure (due to lack of shelf-space, exlusives, popularity amongst their friends, etc), causing them to choose Wii or 360 to a far greater degree than theyīre currently doing (and in April, only 13% of next-gen consoles bought were PS3s).
The PS3 may crawl its way to 10M in the U.S. IF Sony is very aggresive with price cuts AND has a better 1st party line up than last gen (which is likely). But if Sony decides to minimize PS3 losses the price will drop very slowly (since Sony is currently taking a huge loss on every system sold). In this scenario the PS3 will end up at about 7M in the U.S.
A few other things: Sonyīs 1st party games are FAR less popular than Nintendoīs 1st party games (in America, Europe and especially in Japan); Compared to the U.S., PS3 has started off worse in Canada, MUCH worse in Japan, and about equally as badly in Europe; In Japan during the most recent week for Famitsu data, only 1% of the games purchased were PS3 games - thatīs 10% below 360, and >1800% (not a typo) behind what Wii software is selling in Japan! (see Industry News for this and much more sales data)
In fact, the PS3 has started off so badly worldwide, and is continueing to drop in sales so quickly in every single territory that Sony will release the PS4 (which will have a completely different business strategy which will include a $300 pricetag) as soon as possible - probably in about 4 years.
This is obviously vital information for predicting GTA4 sales.
So Starless, I think there may be a solution to tremendously overvalued stocks such as this one. The current final predicted attach rate for this game is 13% - which is completely reasonable. I think if I make a logical argument (in much more detail than I did here) in the PS3 discussion as to why the PS3 has no chance at all of selling anywhere close to 60M, that the PS3 stockprice will drop significantly. This should lead to the GTA4 prediction (as well as some others) also becoming more reasonable.
I think since the data and trends are so overwhelming, the 2 keys are that those who are well informed up bid the good analyses to a greater degree than they have been doing so far (so that others will assume the post is worth reading), and that every so often (perhaps every month), someone updates the most important old analyses with new data; to show whether or not past trends are continueing and past predictions are still most likely.
I completely agree with you... and I'm sure most of the other players here do too. The problem is that new players come in and buy big name stocks (like this one), causing the stock price to rise. Being aware of this, the more experienced players don't short the stock and it remains overvalued (and is widely known to be overvalued).
This seems like a big flaw in that "wisdom of the crowd" thing. Do any of the other prediction markets face problems like this? Is there any solution to the problem?
GTA4 (PS3) is way overvalued. The only reason it could be projected to sell 7.5M is that many people do not realize just how poorly the PS3 is doing. GTA4 would have to sell about 4M in the U.S., and 3.1M in Europe to reach this goal (assuming the percentage in each region stays the same as before).
In the U.S., the PS3 has sold 1276K as of the end of April. In April it sold 82K, and has been dropping in weekly sales by about 20% every month (see PS3 Discussion posts). Even if PS3 suddenly stops its fast and steady sales decline starting now, it would take about 3 years at the current rate for the PS3 to reach 4M. Realistically, including holiday sales bumps and boosts due to price drops and games, the PS3 will take about 2 more years to reach 4M in the U.S. - by that time the next GTA will be out! And of course not every single PS3 owner will buy GTA4 - GTA3 had an attach rate of about 17% on PS2 in the U.S. Even assuming this attach rate goes up by 50%, GTA4 would still only reach about 2.8M in the end.
In Germany, PS3īs start has been even worse! It sold just 16K in its 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th week combined. http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/89889 And Germany was a PS2-dominated country that used to average 78K PS2īs/month - during regular months (according to VGchartz). In other European countries, PS3 appears to be doing similarly - based on software charts. Itīs likely to take the same amount of time for sales to reach 3.1M in Europe as it takes to reach 4M in the U.S., because of the late launch and significantly higher price. And past GTA games on PS2 have had a lower attach rate in Europe than in the U.S. Again assuming that the attach rate increases dramatically, GTA4 will only sell about 2M in Europe.
In all other territories combined (Canada, Japan, etc), it will sell an additional 0.4M. So to be VERY optimistic, it will sell about 5.3M worldwide.
One other very important thing is that the 360 version will be the dominant version. In the U.S., the 360 has outsold the PS3 4 to 1 so far, and continues to outsell it by more than 100% on a monthly basis. The 360 is also much cheaper and more popular, and therefore most people who will buy a new console mainly for GTA4 will buy a 360. In Europe the situation is similar but less in the 360īs favor. Realistically, GTA4 (PS3) will sell about 4.8M.
My comment was that taking a long term short position could be an awful return on investment if the stock won't move in your direction for months. If you're long on a future stock, there's a good chance that'll it'll rise on new info/footage as well as being bought by new players. A short position however, likely won't bear fruit until reviews/sales data come in.
There's risk with both positions in the long run, true. But I believe that the nature of this game favours long rather than short for upcoming games.
Isn't that a problem for all stocks here that aren't coming out for a long time and the problem is the same when you decide to take a long position instead of a short one? Personally I'm staying away from all of games that aren't coming out for a long time, except maybe during an IPO.
That's a terrible strategy. Sales numbers won't be out for these games for another six months and the price may not fall (it will likely rise with further game announcements), and you're just wasting your money when it could be better spent on more short term plays.
Just short sell both stocks if you're certain together they're far too high. If you sell the same amount of stocks for both platforms it's not even important to make a good estimation of how sales will be split between XBox 360 and PS3.
When this game arrives and stalls out around 3-5 million, then can we get serious and bring this projection down to reality? PS3 doesn't have the installed base to support these numbers, period, and all predictions say neither 360 nor PS3 will ever have the base to support the total sales seen by any of the GTA releases last generation. Maybe GTA IV-Massapequa or whatever they come up with next, but not GTA IV.
Recently, I've maxed out my position on a certain stock. During a recent rally, it moved to well above 25% of my port (I'm a new player). The stock was not liquidated, it simply prevented me from purchasing more until it became worth lower than 25% of my worth again.
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I think most people donīt know that in the U.S., the PS3 will most likely sell WORSE than the GameCube. It is already over a quarter million (>3 months of PS3 sales) behind the first 6 months of GC sales, and it is about to fall much further behind. GC sold 916K from May to October of its first full year. The PS3 will sell about half of that without a pricecut! And even with a $100 drop in price AND a pack in game like Resistance, the PS3 will still most likely be unable to keep up with what the GC did, let alone catch up to it. After that the GC started doing even better, and sold 4.3M in its next 14 months. With another $100 price drop (to $400), the PS3 will be lucky to sell 3.2M (which would require more than doubling what itīs currently on pace to sell).
By this point (after 3 holdiday seasons or 26 months) the PS3 will optimistically be at about 5M. (This is assuming a $100 price cut in a couple months and another in about a year, along with a pack-in and many excellent 1st party games.) The PS2 was at 15.7M at that point.
By then, even casual gamers will know that the more expensive PS3 is a relative failure (due to lack of shelf-space, exlusives, popularity amongst their friends, etc), causing them to choose Wii or 360 to a far greater degree than theyīre currently doing (and in April, only 13% of next-gen consoles bought were PS3s).
The PS3 may crawl its way to 10M in the U.S. IF Sony is very aggresive with price cuts AND has a better 1st party line up than last gen (which is likely). But if Sony decides to minimize PS3 losses the price will drop very slowly (since Sony is currently taking a huge loss on every system sold). In this scenario the PS3 will end up at about 7M in the U.S.
A few other things:
Sonyīs 1st party games are FAR less popular than Nintendoīs 1st party games (in America, Europe and especially in Japan);
Compared to the U.S., PS3 has started off worse in Canada, MUCH worse in Japan, and about equally as badly in Europe;
In Japan during the most recent week for Famitsu data, only 1% of the games purchased were PS3 games - thatīs 10% below 360, and >1800% (not a typo) behind what Wii software is selling in Japan! (see Industry News for this and much more sales data)
In fact, the PS3 has started off so badly worldwide, and is continueing to drop in sales so quickly in every single territory that Sony will release the PS4 (which will have a completely different business strategy which will include a $300 pricetag) as soon as possible - probably in about 4 years.
This is obviously vital information for predicting GTA4 sales.
So Starless, I think there may be a solution to tremendously overvalued stocks such as this one. The current final predicted attach rate for this game is 13% - which is completely reasonable. I think if I make a logical argument (in much more detail than I did here) in the PS3 discussion as to why the PS3 has no chance at all of selling anywhere close to 60M, that the PS3 stockprice will drop significantly. This should lead to the GTA4 prediction (as well as some others) also becoming more reasonable.
I think since the data and trends are so overwhelming, the 2 keys are that those who are well informed up bid the good analyses to a greater degree than they have been doing so far (so that others will assume the post is worth reading), and that every so often (perhaps every month), someone updates the most important old analyses with new data; to show whether or not past trends are continueing and past predictions are still most likely.