I don't doubt they can ship them.

Just how much will they sale, right now they are at about 65ish% sold to customers of what was produced. And thats not all that good.

They can ship 20million, what good is it if only 5million is sold right.

The problem I am seeing with a lot of the math here is that people are doubling the current "in the pipe" numbers when I am not sure that they should be doing so. Currently predictions set them around 3.6-3.7 million in sales with about 1.8 to 1.9 million "in the pipe" (ie warehouses, retailers, etc). They have no reason to double the number "in the pipe" since it is just their padding essentially. They will refill it as it is needed no doubt but this number exists for the purpose of limiting losses if they can't sell units for whatever reason.

Obviously I have no clue if this is 100% true, since Sony could very well decide to take the risk, but they would be doing so just to make headlines so I doubt it. Now, if they don't plan to increase this padding window it would mean that they would need global sales around 9.1 to 9.2 million by the end of the fiscal year to achieve their stated goal. Which of course means they need to sell 5.5 million units between then and now.

Out of the question? No not really, assuming they can get the PR ball rolling and get back into the swing of things a solid X-Mas could send them nearly half way to their goal. But I still think that a lot of things need to go right for them here in the next month for them to have the kind of X-mas they need to make it happen.

In closing, I seriously doubt they would make the claim without a plan of action to make it happen. I look forward to seeing what they have in mind =)

It's not really surprising given the upcoming holiday season. I think 11 million shipped total is a very realistic possibility.

Sure they can ship that many, but like I said it'll be channel stuffing, because no way they'll even reach 8 million sold to consumers by the end of the fiscal year

Shipped to retailers could easily be higher than that.

If they don't have 8 Million sales by end of Fiscal year I would consider it a disaster. As it stands if they do as good as they have thus far they will have about 7.2 Million, and you have got to believe they are gonna have a better X-Mas this year than last.

Since the start of E3 I think they have been trying to get the hype going to get sales going, and I have to believe they will continue that trend. If their attempts over the next 8 months don't get them at least a 22.23% increase over their last 8 months sales period then they have very serious problems. NOTE: 22.23% sales increase is what is needed to hit the 8 Million sales by end of fiscal year.

Just to be clear when I say sales I mean to consumers, I generally say shipped otherwise.

If they manage 8m WW by the end of this year, I reckon thats pretty good going TBH, considering the lack of titles and high price.  That would make it virtually identical to the 360 whereas the 360 didn't have competition in it's first year.

I honestly think the first 6 months of 2008 will be a good time for the PS3 with all the big games coming out then.  MGS4, KZ2, FFXIII etc. 

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/06q4/

Q4 FY06 Earnings Announcement

If the above chart is correct and they want to move 11 mill in this year alone I'd say they're living in coo-coo land. People are talking about stuffing the channels but surely there's a limit, they already have a significant chunk of the 5.5 mill initail shipment sitting on shelves.

The only way I can see this target being reached is if A)another 100 dollars is shaved off the price(even then I think they'd struggle) or B)a game with the impact of a GTA3 or FFVII is released which looking at the console's lineup I don't think will arrive.

Going by the chart, it looks like they want to ship 11m this fiscal year (until 31st march 2008). This will IMHO be very hard for them to do.

It probably depends on how many units can sit on shelves and in storage ie. having already being shipped....I doubt this will be more than 2-3m surely?

In total this would mean that Sony want 16.5m units shipped until the end of FY 2007. Nearly 4m units have been sold so far and taking into consideration there could be as many as 3m units extra on shelves and storage (very unlikely though), this means they need to sell over 9m units from now until the end of FY2007.

This would be a huge task and IMHO, cannot be done. Being more realistic, I would say, selling 5 or 6m is more likely.