Just for the fact that MS doesn't publish data, chances are thin.

That's some weird math you did there. Of course, before you even calculate how much, if any, the XBO is undertracked by, we need to know how much of that shipped number actually are XBOs. There's also the fact that the One has shipped to many new countries since July, so shipments are going to be artificially higher than normal.

*Looks at front page*
NOPE

How on earth do you think WiiU is 300k undertracked. Unless you think Nintendo shipped like 1.5m WiiU's (Triple last Q')

Where's the 500K undertrack coming from?

2.4M shipped (Xb one360), vs ~1.6M sold = 0.8M excess (mostly of Xb one of course, but some of that will be 360 too), are people suggesting an excess of only 0.3M across the 2 consoles is the max possible for the Xbox family? In September they would have started filling the channels to prepare for the Holiday sales, and now they are in many more markets they need more units in the retail channel to be able to meet ongoing needs. A 300K excess would be sensible when there are only 13 markets for Xb one to service, but that has now tripled (or more) so there needs to be several hundred thousand more Xb ones in the retail channel in order to ensure adequate supply.

6 Million as of 30 Sept, ~6.1 million as of 11 Oct. That's about as much undertracking as I think is reasonable. So about 200K undertrack which is about 3% of LTD. 3% of LTD is an acceptable margin for error for VGC at this point in Xb one's lifecyle (and yes, that means anyone who complains about a PS4 undertracking of 200K is being a bit ridiculous, however there is somewhat more of a basis to that since Sony did announce 10 million PS4's sold to consumers, not a combined shipment figure). 8.5% undertracking (a 500K under track) is a bigger than is reasonable for VGC.

Similarly a 300K over track of Wii U, is reasonable as a % of sales given Nintendo has not announced actual sales to consumers.

When an LTD gets unequivocally out of whack by >5%, or >1 million (whicever is the smallest number) then there should be adjustments. Otherwise VGC vs. shipped data is a reasonable estimation of worldwide console sell through. And when you start getting up to the 70+ million LTD even 1 million under/over is not that big of a deal, unless sales are very close and you want to see who's winnin the pissing contest. As of now, is it reasonable to assume Xb one will eventually take 2nd place, and probably this year. that's as much of a pissing contest as is needed right now between Xb one and WIi U.

Personally I don;t see Smash preventing the inevitable. Could be that Xb one gets ahead before Smash even comes out.

It was sarcasm, you know because the OP pulled numbers out of nowhere and anyone can do that. ;)

Shipments don't tell you what the exact sales are, shipments don't mean much in the grand scheme of things, not to the end figure anyway.

Microsoft and Nintendo need to start updating with actual sold through to customers figures, instead of this shipped nonsense.

No they don't, because these figures are for investors and what they have sold (and if they have sold to retailers that's what they have sold) all that matters.

The numbers arn't released for the purpose of armchair analysis on web forums.

And whilst I don't agree with Toast's figures, shipments are most certainly not useless when it comes to this kind of discussion.

Yes they do, because shipped figures by themselves don't give investors any solid basis in fact for what direction that part of the business is going in. Shipments aren't an accurate measure for what the actual cashflow is back to the company and investors want as accurate information as possible to make their judgements on where they're going to invest.

It's not about web forums, it's about everyone that could potentially buy stock having accurate sales data to make educated decisions on where to invest or knowing exactly what is going on.

Shipment data by itself is useless, because it's not telling investors what the actual reality of the sales situation is. As far as this discussion goes Toastboy made his thread claiming what the sales were, based on the shipped data (not even a solid shipped figure for XB1 at that), it's about as useless for arguing actual sales as you can get.

The best anyone can say is X and Y company shipped X and Y amounts.

There's no evidence for the sales and sales are what this thread is about, right?

It does though, because at worst sales will lag shipments by 6 months. MS/Sony/Nintendo can't keep stuffing the channel infinitely, those systems have to be sold, and if they don't sell you get a really low Q in shipments.

Nintendo give much more of a breakdown because they're solely videogames, MS and Sony don't need to because they're much bigger than that, and if anyone is thinking of investing in either because of their videogames business (why on earth would that be the case for MS ...) they would subscribe to trackers like NPD anyway.

Its too early to tell, and even if those numbers are accurate it still wouldnt have happened. Dont go saying Seece was right until the fat lady sings. We wont hear the last of it.