As to the 11 million figure Sony is sticking to, I'm sure we all agree that this is very unlikely, but the real question is, do investors know?
Put yourself in Sony's shoes for a while, if you gave a realistic projection for yearly PS3 sales (say, 5 million) then investors are going to look at that figure and start making up their minds. The Playstation empire is a large part of Sony, and if people see that the PS3 will cause Sony huge losses with negligible sales, investors will start pulling out of Sony sooner rather than later.
By having an "optimistic" forecast, hopefully the investors will keep their money in Sony, at least until the real numbers come out. This gives them some time to try to get the good ship PS3 back afloat.
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