Thanks ethomaz.

Do you mean the full figures or a percentage of them?

It can't be full shipment figures since those aren't used for any of the consoles. It would have to be a percentage of the shipment figures, and based on shipment figures of the subsequent year (like Carl said it's a silly idea that Sony continued to ship PS2's if there were no sales of their prior shipment).

Great thread. People need to understand 2 things:

a)If you debate the PS2 vs DS numbers is not because "you are paranoid or afraid" is because the numbers are off. If the numbers were clear we would all accept it.

b) People that are bothered by the fact that the few who are discrediting VGChartz are the very same ones who use this sites numbers on a daily bases for their arguments. nee d to understand: some estimates are better than other estimates. If there is evidence... what's the problem with debating the numbers???
If VGC numbers are wrong we should accept it, just because we used other (more reliable) numbers??? Come on!!! That's a dumb!!!!

I would say that PS2 shipments/sales could be roughly figured out using the PS3 numbers here. Could only be done every 3 Months though with the shipment reports.

If we know our PS3 numbers are accurate with the mix of shipment data, NPD and Nintendo charts... And we know how much PS3s are usually on shelves/ships... We should be able to get rough PS2 shipment numbers.

Imagine this - Sony announce 4 Million PS3/PS2 shipments for a Quarter. We know that the PS3 had sold 2.5 Million and can estimate say, 800k in supply. That would leave us with 700k PS2s shipped for the Quarter. Depending on the Quarter, it should be easy to figure out demand by looking at past trends. 500k sold with 200k on shelves? 550-150? 450-250? While its not exactly accurate, I think it would be much better than leaving numbers for over a Year then reporting them as numbers from right now.

If I were in control, Id rather be ~200k off the numbers than ~2 Million off the numbers.

So this is why Sony fans get a lot of hate.. :P

Seriously, I thought that anyone who knows shit about videogames sales does not think that VGChartz numbers are accuarate.

I have an idea Carl. Because I've pretty much lost all faith in ioi at this point (depite him adding the new tools, he has been ignoring almost every plea for new sales tools I've made), I propose this. Let us create a league that will create a new estimate for the PS2 numbers, and let the people quote those numbers when needed. Any and all representation of PS2 numbers on vgchartz would have their analog in the league's thread, and people could quote from there when needed.

Sometime last year, trunkswd made a thread comparing the vita with the 3ds on aligned launches, but didn't do a good job at it and it made the results really biased (3 regions against one in a good portion of the year). So Kowen made his own version and I've been quoting him ever since. I believe the same needs to be done for the PS2 numbers, it's getting ridiculous. Hopefully the higher ups will take note of it and do something about the desperate numbers team atm.

In the new thread, we would look for PS2 sales trends, use known PS2 shipment trends and extrapolate the latest shipments using known PS3 numbers, look at 3rd party data of sales if any exist, put the pieces together and come up with a reasonable estimate. What are your thoughts on the matter?

To keep the league unbiased, we could ensure a head in each faction, say You, Kowen, ethomaz, me, Rol, thismeintel, Barozi. We all have been adamant about numbers and tools and could add something to the site. (just an idea) And more people could join as there is interest.

The problem with the ~2.4M number is that when a system is as old as and sells as slowly as the PS2 on a weekly basis, there isn't going to be a huge difference between shipment numbers and sold.  Realistically the gap would be closer to ~500K.  Most likely VGC needs to adjust their PS2 numbers up by ~2M for the end of last quarter, probably up ~2.5M-3M for the end of this year.  So, at the end of 2012, sold should be more in the line of ~156.2M-156.7M.

The article should be retracted if the comparison is suspect. The reality is that if one of the products in question isn't actively being tracked. Then the margin of error isn't even the real issue. The issue is that the data is incomplete. The best thing to do is to acknowledge a honest mistake, and wait until the margin is great enough that it could be said with certainty that one has truly surpassed the other.

Or Nintendo itself says the DS shipped more units than PS2... I think that will happen sometime in 2014.

Nintendo will probably end the production of the DS before that even happens.  Nintendo isn't going to support it much longer, especially since its eating into the 3DS sales outside of Japan.  Plus, they don't have a record of supporting their older systems for very long after the release of their new HW.  Besides, with the info we do have, the PS2 had outshipped the DS for most of this year.  I don't see that changing much next year.  Maybe they will be even with one another next year, but before the DS starts making any significant ground, I see Nintendo dropping it.