| Angel_DwK said: so this was the shipment number through Dec. 31th and two months later they announce that number sales and people think its shipped? did they just stop making Ps3's for two months or am I missing something? |
Outside of big milestones(21.3 is certainly not a milestone) the big 3 only update the sales numbers with their fiscal reports. Occassionally we'll hear approximations between these quarters, but since they're not legally binding there can be a good amount of spin with these numbers.
There are times also when a company will comment on regional sales. These are based on data from NPD, Famitsu, etc. and are actual sales to customers(what VGChartz tracks). But when the companies comment on worldwide sales, it's almost always shipped to retailer numbers as it's the only concrete tracking they can do(there are some countries without consumer tracking).
So yes I believe the 21.3 million is Sony's shipped amount as of Dec 31 2008. Unfortunately, we won't really know for certain until May when they release their fiscal year end report.
EDIT: Oh and as for the term "install base" TWRoO is indeed correct, and here's the proof:
It may not be clear but under the watermark it reads "As of March 2007" and according to http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/06q4_sonypre.pdf they had only produced(as this is what they were still reporting at the time) 5.5 million.
