umm guys, chill

it is Entirely Possible they channel stuffed

didn't Microsoft do it for xmas 2006? to get to the touted 10 million shipped mark, then the next quarter they shipped a miniscule amount of 360's to retailers due to the overstuffed xmas channels?

not saying vg overtracked or undertracked, what we HAVE to wait for is next quarter to determine of Sony channel stuffed.

channel stuffing, not surprising. we have seen each of the big three do it at one time or another. and with different consoles. if they had unexpectedly low sales (YoY growth normally is guaranteed into the 3rd year) shipments may have started off strong prepping the first few weeks to prevent shortages, then died off when it became clear shortages would not happen

Sony had much more than 2 million PS2's on the shelves for the most time if I remember correctly.

2 million is surely high but the PS3 underperformed during Christmas because of the reccession and because of the Xbox360 price drop.

2 million is not that high of a number for worldwide stock. Sony absolutely tends to stuff the channel, they always did that. Add the fact that the PS3 underperformed and you get it.

About the Xbox360 number: Almost all of our VGChartz users underestimated the Xbox360's holiday sales and stores where surprised too. So the Xbox360 actually had less supply during holidays than stores expected, right? So why are you acting surprised there are 2 million PS3 on shelves? The PS3 sold much better during the whole year and of course it was expected that would carry over to christmas. That didn't happen, it's that easy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Microsoft announced 28.5 million consoles shipped as of December. According to VGC, there were 27m consoles shipped...So they had a large number of 1.5m units sitting, too.

You see, there's this thing called 'overestimating demand', and some videogame companies do it. Atari did it with E.T, John Romero did it with Daikatana, and even MS did it with 2006 shipment numbers (they overshipped 2m consoles so they could hit the 10m shipped number....They only sold 8m, which is a much larger gap, FYI).

@ mesoteto )

your characterization of the situation is flawed and biased

the fact is, that there is a 2 mln gap between real shipments and the sales VGC tracked and there are 2 main factors that could lead to it

1) undertracking - sales might be higher, which is why stores have ordered more

2) channelstuffing - although many people see this as an active task it really is passive, Sony can for example increase the inventory stores have by reducing prices for high quantity orders, stores decide themselves whether or not they go for it

certain arguments speak for 2)
- bad economic situation
- fierce competition with much more affordable prices
- YoY decline of sales, which likely hasn't been anticipated, when the orders where made
- many tracking services in line with VGC numbers

and certain arguments speak for 1)
- last quarter shipment numbers were already higher than expected (based on VGC numbers) and back then it already was tributed to high inventory levels, so why would shops over order so much, when they already had plenty of stock?.. shop keepers aren't stupid, you know
- some big tracking services didn't release their numbers yet and there could be quite a difference to VGC
- in many regions there is no good tracking services so the numbers of VGC can't be validated


As of now the "channelstuffing"-side seems to have the better arguments, but if the next quarter shipments aren't considerably smaller than last year (2.33 mln) their reasoning was likely false (no matter how true/good it sounded).


I'd personally be more pleased if "undertracking" was true, as I want the videogaming device of my choice to sell well (and I don't feel personally attached to VGC like some people of the "channelstuffing"-side) , but ofcourse if the next quarter shows shipments had a sharp decline YoY, then I'd acknowlegde, that the "channelstuffing" hypothesis in this case was true, while a mild decline or an increase will sway me to the "undertracking" side.

same deals are going to 360 too, and shipped was 28.5 so i doubt that or the 360 was overtracked which isn't likely.

USA + Europe + Japan sales are closer to WW than you think. Because at least in South America many people buy the consoles from importers (many of them don't enter to the country legally, they don't pay taxes so they can sell the consoles cheaper) who buy the consoles in the ports of Panama or Venezuela (from american flag ships) and then re-sell the consoles in their countries, so they are registered as sales in the United States (Almost all the games sold in South America are the same NTSC games that are sold in USA). That's why you could buy a ps3/xbox360/Wii in any country of South America almost the same day it was released in NA.

I can imagine it's almost the same in other regions from the Third World.

true that buy sony started selling their system here recently.

i doubt there is 2 million on shelves? if the damn consoles wernt being bought then why the hell would sony ship out more in the first place? either way it doesnt matter, there aint many peope that use this website for sales numbers anyway. if you go to other websites now you will see alot of articles about how microsofts 8 million numbers was bullshit! microsoft aint widened the gap but they have retained it. thats all. ps3 and 360 sold the same amount in 2008.