If you can't believe that Sony can produce and ship that many; than you can't believe that Wii will produce and ship more.

Effectively that's what they said. They said both things, that they're keeping the forecast and that they're using a new metric for what the forecast is about. There's an ambiguity here, but judging from their declarations I'd say they are going to use the new metric exclusively from now on.

And yes, no matter whether I'm wrong on this point or not, the forecast is still misleading...

EDIT - as for your analogy, it would be more accurate if you had said:

You make a forecast saying you'll run 11 miles till the end of the month. The following week you say: "I'm going to change how I count a mile, but I still mantain my forecast".

That's much more similar to Sony's statements. Doesn't look so clear now, does it?

This thread is about numbers and forecasts. The rest is discussion, you can discuss whatever you want based on the numbers...

Then please show us that. No quote you have presented here, and absolutely nothing on the report, has the method and the forecast in the same sentence or even near each other. The forecast is mentioned only in passing in the report, and only ever speaks of revenue, income, etc - never units sold or shipped. The only thing they do say is that it's unchanged, and as you've openly stated here, your interpretation implies a covert change (which would configure a crime).

OK, what about this? Quote by San Levenson, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations of Sony Corporation of America. Emphasis mine:

As you may have notice, we’ve the actual unit disclosure for hardware and software from production shipments to [sell-in]. We’ve also done this for the unit forecast for each game platform. The result, however, is no change in the forecast figures. PS2 hardware unit sales are expected to be 10 million units, PSP hardware unit sales are expected to be 9 million units, and PS3 hardware unit sales are expected to be 11 million units.

I actually hadn't noticed this quote before, and I believe it settles it?

SOURCE: http://seekingalpha.com/article/42544

Yes, that does it. Thank you.

But on another note... they're crazy. I mean... 10 million to retailers in 3 quarters? Retailers that already have 600 thousand in stock? That will simply refuse to carry more than 2 million stock after Christmas? They couldn't pull that one off, even if it sold another 8 million to consumers till the end of the calendar year.

Thank you for pushing me to find the definitive proof ;)

Yes, they are crazy. Maybe they're planning to gradually drop the forecast in the Q2 and Q3 reports? If they don't, it will certainly backfire when they publish their final fiscal year report...

Knowing how they always seem to choose the most stupid alternative, I'm betting on the latter. Or at least, I'd say they won't change it in the Q2 report, because "come on, Christmas is coming, why would we drop the sales forecast now?".

wow.

nice reply NJ5 btw, nice to see all the numbers put together, and although it means sony will have 2 million less units in stock by March, they will still have a lot, and a lot will still be with retailers i think (assuming the retailers overstock through christmas, or overestimate after christmas demand).

and i made those estimates with a 'minimum not sold' number so the minimum not sold by then is likely to be 4 million, with at least 3 million of those still held by Sony.
in my opinion they won't have 10.5 million consoles sold by March though, more like 9-9.5. (8-8.5 million after christmas)

Sony should have said, "So our total-shipped forecast for '08 will is down by 2 million units."  Or they should have said, "We will retroactively apply these to our previous numbers and the new 'shipped' figure is down to 3.6 million for fiscal '07 from 5.5 million."

I guess the end result is that they've decreased their forecast by approximately 2 million units. This is certainly going in the right direction, and if they have another disappointing quarter even with Lair and Heavenly Sword and whatever else is coming out this quarter, they'll likely decrease their forecast again. And they'd have to if they weren't ramping up their production by then.

Except they aren't really. Expecting to sell 11 million units (even if only to retail) for the fiscal year, when they already began with units in the channel, and had a dismal first quarter, is far more ambitious than just shipping them (as in prodution shipments). They could always pille up more units (they were already holding to 2 million, why not more?), and actually they might have to, if they already were into long term production contracts. But selling 11 million... there's a limit to how much you can force retailers to hold on to, specially after Christmas.