tell me how they work then. All I see is a random poll of 1700 people. How does that equate into this is a fact? I have 4 friends that had only a PS3. They all got an Xbox One this time.
Is this really a big deal? Meh, I guess it is for some of you. This type of thing happens all the time when consoles release. I remember these types of polls when 360 and PS3 came out.
Everyone is jumping to the 360. PS3 doomed!
Because it is impractical and impossible to ask everyone on the planet questions, surveys and polls can be made and asked to a small subset of the population (chosen at random for best results) and then the answers they give, after statistically interpreted, can be applied to the larger population with some plus or minus variable of error. The more people you ask, the better results you can get and the less error in the deviation from the population you will have, but 1000 people taking a poll or survey is a good amount. Mind you there can be errors with the poll such as the type of people that took it, those that bother to take it at all vs those who chose not to take it, where it was taken (so if the poll was on the Sony site lets say, there is a bias there and the data will have more errors).