| Comrade Tovya said:
I'm sorry, but you are wrong. MS likely did ship as many units as they did, but they did not sell as many to customers via their distributors as they implied. Secondly, it's absolutely not illegal to say you shipped more than you did. It is quite embarassing for a company to wrong however. It would be illegal for MS to say that Sony stole their technology if they don't have the proof to backup the claim. An accusation requires proof or a civil suit can be brought against you for defimation of character at the very least. Saying you sold 30 million copies of a game you only sold 300,000 copies of is not illegal, it's just embarrassing. You don't know anything about law... which is understandable, because not a lot of people do. It is immoral, don't get me wrong, but it's by no means illegal. If you think it is, just look up civil code and prove me wrong. Better yet, don't waste your time, I've been sued for similar things before. A judge won't even look at the case unless you can provide undeniable proof that a companies misinformation had direct consequences on your products' bottom line... and even then a judge is likely to throw it out. |
Thinking about it, you might be right, it's illegal to put wrong information on the quaterly financials, i.e. what I said would be illegal if Sony put on their earning releases to investors that they shipped 40 million PS3s and made 1 billion on their gaming division. Since companies rarely put games shipped on their earning releases, then they can get away with that. Still I can't think of a time where a company said they shipped 2 million when they really didn't as you suggested.
