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Seihyouken on 04 February 2010
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Zucas said:
Munkeh111 said:
The more interesting thin is that the lead for the 360 in terms of shipped is about 5.2m and sold it is 5.7m. The PS3 has shipped 33.5m and the 360 shipped 38.7m

So have Sony been channel stuffing? Or one of them them wrongly tracked?

The more relevant figure is what they had sold as of 2nd January:
PS3 30.9m
360 37.0m

So apparently, there are 2.6m PS3s on shelves and 1.7m 360s. I think ioi was right the first time. Or do they measure these figures differently in some way?

Potentially two things.  One, there are always bigger differences in sold to shipped in the holiday quarter.  Take a look at DS shipped compared to sold and you'll see quite a difference as well.  Think it iis about 2 million as well.  Same for 360 as you mentioned. But we could probably attribute the other part to potential stuffing of the market.  Something Sony has been doing with the PSP but maybe a little bit with the PS3 this time.  Now I know whne that is mentioned, it is usually taken as a negative term, but companies do it with retailers all the time so don't take it negatively.

For reference, the most extreme case of this was back with the 360 at the end of 2006.  MS had a goal of hitting 10 million and they achieved it but through stuffing the market.  At the end of 2006 they had shipped 10.4 million 360s and we have sales at 6.71 million.  Of course it was very easy to tell that they did it because over the next 2 quarters (or 6 months) MS only shipped 1.2 milllion 360s or actually 600k per quarter. 

Could have had something similar with Ps3 but won't know until we see this quarter's shipments.  But, companies do it all the time to hit their projections. 

Sony PS3 "Shipped to Retail" July-Sept 2009: 3.2 Million
VGC PS3 "Sold to Consumer" July-Sept 2009: 2.45 Million

Sony PS3 "Shipped to Retail" Oct-Dec 2009: 6.5 Million
VGC PS3 "Sold to Consumer" Oct-Dec 2009: 6.49 Million

Sony PS3 "Shipped to Retail" Launch-Sept 2009: 27.02
VGC PS3 "Sold to Consumer" Launch-Sept 2009: 24.36

Sony PS3 "Shipped to Retail" Launch-Dec 2009: 33.52
VGC PS3 "Sold to Consumer" Launch-Dec 2009: 30.85

If Sony is stuffing the channels, it's the second quarter in a row they've done so. Either Sony doesn't plan on shipping any more PS3s for a long period this year or we have incorrectly assumed that Sony stuffed their channels last quarter.