I Am Bad at Predictions

So, I've previously made some predictions in this blog, and by the ones I can remember the most, I've been right and wrong two major times, netting me a fairly poor 50% prediction rate.  Well, I just noticed it today, but that rate went entirely down thanks to something else I stated back in June.  For those who don't want to hop back in time, I'll just go ahead and quote just what I got so very, very wrong.

So, what is the problem, if not something easy to admit and point out to, which has already been done?  My wager is that the above problems are merely symptoms of the real problem here.  The fact that we as 'Gamers' cry out that there's not enough innovation, enough originality, and then when it comes around, it's not rewarded as one would expect, merely because it's something new, something untested.  A rough formula.  Pictured above, obviously, is Catherine, which is Atlus' first dip into the HD side of the pool.  Likely not their last, but it's almost that easy to tell you that Catherine will not make as much money as they're used to in previous games they've put out.

You can't get anymore different than the current climate of gaming than Catherine, and yet all those people who are quick to knock the latest number game, the ones who scoff at FPS games, of those, only a small percent will go out and buy Catherine when it's released.  This, in turn, sends a message to developers, one that says 'Make what's already out there if you want to get a paycheck'.

Well, I'm sure you, reading this, know where this is going already, but just to pull it all together, Catherine sold 200k copies in NA in -one week-.  So not only was I (thankfully) wrong, since that's actually Atlus' largest launch to-date, but I was so wrong that I cannot help but find it hilarious.  What am I, friggin' Patcher now?

I guess the lesson here is:  Never expect doom dooooooooooooooom.  Because it just comes from a negative place and things in life just tend to surprise you when you expect doom.  But this unexpected greatness in sales?  It couldn't have happened to a better game.  While I haven't personally played it, I've caught a few livestreams of it that my buddy has put on to see how it plays and see how the story unfolds and while I expected a great and entertaining story, I did not expect the, quote "terribly difficult puzzler" sections of the game to actually look fun.  Sure, they also look like they are capable of creating frustration to the max, and a few of them actually border on "How the hell was I suppose to do this without a FAQ/Video", but they look well enough to be only challenging in a fun way, rather than the soul-numbing way.

And despite what many could see as me 'ruining' the game for myself by seeing (part of) the story, I don't believe I'm doing so at all.  I haven't seen all of it after all, and if anything, seeing what I have just further cements that, while I don't have it now, I will have it in the future, settling for nothing less than a brand-new copy, whereas beforehand I was just figuring on getting it at the ever-vague some point where all-too-many games have found themselves in regards to my purchasing schedules, much less my playing ones. 

 I guess maybe I should just stop predicting things, because I'm now swinging at 1:2, and I'm not sure I want to see the number in the 'Wrong' column get any bigger.  But I'm not sure I'll remember this next time I go to say something that will put me out there on the line.  So, we'll see.  I'm sure if I state something that ends up being wrong again, I won't hesitate to bring it up, but it'd be nice to also hit something right on the money.