Just a note. In all finance reports Sony, MS, and Nintendo say how many they have shipped. They will call them sales cause to them it is. They sale them to retailers. But to the rest of the world they are shipments and do not amke an accurate representation as of how many are actually sold as you've seen with the PSP and PS3 so many times. Now it is true that NIntendo will release press releases commenting on sales provided by that of NPD and Media Create but that's it. I'm sure they have people, like every company, tracking actual sales for them to help make predictions on how many they should produce to ship, but otherwise they get their numbers from NPD and Media Create. Sony is really the only one out there who is sneaky with their shipments. They have been caught in the past to count extra shipments that are just laying around in their warehouses. They are also known to overship heavily. As you've seen with PS3 and PSP and even PS2. Only difference is is that PS2 was actually saling. PS3 and PSP aren't. Sooner or later though this overshipping will bite Sony in the ass. Saw it with the PSP. Overshipped so much that in Q4 06 they only shipped 2 million PSP's while DS was able to ship 11 million that quarter. That's what happen when you overship. You keep flooding the retailers with shipments and as soon as it gets full they can't accept anymore and not for awhile as remember they are buying these things. If they continue to sit in there they are losing a hell of a lot of money. Your about to see that with teh PS3. Sony might have used a form of channel stuffing to ensure PS3 would be bought heavily for this last quarter. But as always retailers will get their warehouses full and sooner or later say no more. And with the hefty price of the PS3 they'd be losing billions if they aren't saling. The breaking point there will be a lot sooner. Not even channel stuffing will work then. Overshipping may help you out for a quarter to make your sales look better but if a console ain't saling shipments has no chance of ever keeping up. You might even see by the end of Q2 07 shipments just already start dropping from Sony. We also saw this done by MS for Q4 06. Used channel stuffing to put millions of extra 360's out there. Next quarter only shipped 500k. This upcoming quarter will probably only ship 1 million tops. Wii on the other hand will be very caught up with shipments somewhere between 1-1.5 million. Probably closer to 1.5 million. Wii could hit 10 milllion shipped by the end of Q2 07. But yea basically all companies present shipments not sales. And overshipping is a bad thing as sooner or later it bites you in the ass.
