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> It's a stupid move by Nintendo. Definitely not nice, but stupid? I'm not sure about that. I have some doubts that Nintendo (being usually very good at not ma

by fhd2 13y ago

> It's a stupid move by Nintendo. Definitely not nice, but stupid? I'm not sure about that. I have some doubts that Nintendo (being usually very good at not making their community angry IIRC) would do this without reason. Can we rule out that they actually noticed declining sales of some titles as Let's Play videos about them popped up? I can't imagine they wanted a PA article on this though.

mistercow 13y ago
>Can we rule out that they actually noticed declining sales of some titles as Let's Play videos about them popped up? Let's run with that reasoning for a minute. That means that they did a study and found not only that the Let's Plays were costing them sales, but also that the lost revenue was small enough that it would be more profitable to keep the videos up and intercept the ad revenue, than to have them taken down entirely. What that means is that the effect size they observed must have been tiny. As a consequence, to have observed a statistically significant correlation, they would have needed an extremely large sample size. Keep in mind that these are some very noisy variables they are supposed to have measured. So in conclusion, yes I think we can rule that possibility out. Or at least, if they did notice declining sales, they were irrational for thinking that was sufficient evidence to take this action.
- dykesa 13y ago
  You're assuming studies were done as opposed to just some exec hearing about it in a meeting and going "We need to get a handle on this thing"?
  - mistercow 13y ago
    My point was that the rational version of what fhd2 suggested is very unlikely, leaving only irrational possibilities. If Nintendo is doing this on an executive's whim, then that's pretty stupid, which was my point.
- fhd2 13y ago
  > Let's run with that reasoning for a minute. That means that they did a study and found not only that the Let's Plays were costing them sales, but also that the lost revenue was small enough that it would be more profitable to keep the videos up and intercept the ad revenue, than to have them taken down entirely. Maybe someone thought it'll make folks take their LPs down themselves without making much of a fuzz? But I admit it's not a very likely scenario.

by fhd2 13y ago

mistercow 13y ago

>Can we rule out that they actually noticed declining sales of some titles as Let's Play videos about them popped up? Let's run with that reasoning for a minute. That means that they did a study and found not only that the Let's Plays were costing them sales, but also that the lost revenue was small enough that it would be more profitable to keep the videos up and intercept the ad revenue, than to have them taken down entirely. What that means is that the effect size they observed must have been tiny. As a consequence, to have observed a statistically significant correlation, they would have needed an extremely large sample size. Keep in mind that these are some very noisy variables they are supposed to have measured. So in conclusion, yes I think we can rule that possibility out. Or at least, if they did notice declining sales, they were irrational for thinking that was sufficient evidence to take this action.

dykesa 13y ago
You're assuming studies were done as opposed to just some exec hearing about it in a meeting and going "We need to get a handle on this thing"?
- mistercow 13y ago
  My point was that the rational version of what fhd2 suggested is very unlikely, leaving only irrational possibilities. If Nintendo is doing this on an executive's whim, then that's pretty stupid, which was my point.
fhd2 13y ago
> Let's run with that reasoning for a minute. That means that they did a study and found not only that the Let's Plays were costing them sales, but also that the lost revenue was small enough that it would be more profitable to keep the videos up and intercept the ad revenue, than to have them taken down entirely. Maybe someone thought it'll make folks take their LPs down themselves without making much of a fuzz? But I admit it's not a very likely scenario.