VGC staff, Please help me understand 360 shipped/sold figure...

[Bodhesatva]

reverie said:
TalonMan,

Your numbers are correct, however I don't agree with your conclusion. There's a notable difference between Nintendo's reports and vgchartz:

FY2002: 240k

FY2003: 280k

FY2004: 180k

FY2005: 60k

...and that's the difference between "sold to retail" and "sold to consumers". Japanese retailers had about 200k GC units on their shelves in March 2002, 2003 and 2004 respectively. In March 2005 that dropped to 60k, maybe because retailers stopped carrying GC hardware. 200k units was ample stock for a system that sold around 10k per week outside of the holidays, equaling 15 or 20 weeks of stock.

 If there are only 240,000 consoles sitting on the shelves in Japan, Nintendo needs to learn how to stock.