Monty on 08 January 2007
broshnat said:
Simple answer is because nothing like 10.4 million units have been sold, as many have stated there are a huge amount of units sitting in warehouses and in shops - same with PSP.
VG Charts tracks sales not shipped numbers generally, as in some cases such as this there can be a large discrepancy between the two...
It is well known that MS reports "sold" as "sold to retailer", whereas Sony reports "shipped" as a unit that simply has left the assembly line.
The difference is that the MS total does not inlcude those units just sitting in a warehouse unsold to retailers, whereas Sony's could. Their "sold" number is units that are in the consumer's hand or sitting on the store shelf.
Here's how Robbie Bach phrased it:
"Robbie Bach on how they count things:
Q: It’s 10 million shipped, right?
A: Yeah. In our case, it’s reasonably close to sold through. To make sure we’re clear, Sony does shipped from factory. We don’t. Our shipped means it has left a distribution warehouse in Memphis to a retailer. There is a big lag of six week to eight-week lag between what we called shipped and what Sony calls shipped. That’s the way we do the accounting."
