PS2 will remain the best selling console of all time by the end of this gen

[Michael-5]

DS is only 1.6 million units behind, and they stopped shipping PS2's.

What I said: I'm fairly certain they stopped manufactering PS2's now and shipped all of their stock.

What I should have said: I'm fairly certain they stopped manufacturing PS2's now, and I think they shipped all of their stock.

After talking to ethomaz, now I know Sony just merges PS2 shipped figures with PS3.

 

You: "The Q4 number of 600k was Jan-Mar of this year, not last fall."

Ah, you're right, still there is a huge drop for 2012

 

You: "The DS hasn't been selling 40k a week since mid July."

You're right, I probably thought that just because I just finished my Q2 update lol.

 

You: Also Famitsu is not Media Create.  The PS2 sold 1,081 last week according to Media Create, and has sold 48,275 so far this year.  That would be an average of 1,149 sales per week in Japan alone.  A far cry from your claim of only 1-3k a week worldwide.  Also how can you say the PS2 hasn't shipped many this year when it outshipped the DS for Jan-Mar, it very likely outshipped it for Apr-Jun, and as long as it doesn't drop more than 63% yoy will outship the DS in the Jul-Sept quarter as well.  Even if it shipped that 600k and then nothing else, that is far more than 1-3k a week.  I don't know if you got that from VGC or somewhere else, but the PS2 numbers have always been horribly inaccurate here.

Michael: I didn't quote Famitsu, and where did you gt that figure? For Japan I claimed an average of 750 units a week based off a few media create figures I got rangine from 250 - 1,000. I admit that wa an estimate, and if you have a good source there I would like to use it to make more accurate predictions on PS2 sales. I dunno why I said PS2 only sells 1-3k per week since my Q2 update originally had PS2 gain 320k in 26 weeks, which would correspond to an average of about 13,000 a week. I have now adjusted toat figure to 500k, which makes weekly sales closer to 20,000 a week (still less then DS, but not by much).

Were did you get shipment figures for PS2 for FY 2012?

 

You: Case in point.  In 2010 the PS2 shipped 6.9 million.  According to you VGC said 4.59 (it seems like the site has been stripped of PS2 info, so I'll take your word).  That's a gap of 2.31 million.  Then in 2011 the PS2 shipped 4.7 million and VGC tracked 2.25.  That is a gap of 2.45 million.  Add in this year and you probably have a shipped/sold gap of 6+ million.  (and I don't believe this discrepency just started in 2010, so the number is likely larger if you go further back)  At what point do you ask yourself is a company really buying millions of PS2s that they are never going to sell, or maybe, just maybe the VGC data is completely wrong.  You say that PS2 sales are crashing and businesses are trying to sell off their old inventory, but then who bought 600k of them in January to March.  More than the DS which according to you is crushing the PS2 in sales this year.

Also you seem to be comparing sony financial years to VGC calendar years unless you adjusted the data for that.  Another clarification, 900k is 43% of 2.1 million, not 30%. lol! bad math, I adjusted my estimates up.

Anyway the takeaway from all this is that the DS surpassing the PS2 is probably unlikely unless Nintendo decided to make a very aggressive price cut this holiday.  This is probably unlikely though as it would cannibalize 3DS sales.

Michael: Case in point, shipped figures =/= (Do not equal) sold figures. Selling 66% of what you ship is very reasonable, especially considering the downward trend in sales PS2 is having. Since the PS2 arket is shrinking (maybe not crashing), Sony will alays ship more uits then they sell. Rarely will anone sell everything they ship because when that happens there is something called a shortage. Now yes, 6 million units on store shelves is quite a bit (VGC probably was very very poor at tracking PS2 sales), and something is odd with the number, I agree.

The way I look at it, is that VGC had PS2 sales at 153.68 by the end of the year last year. Sony had 154.4 million units shipped. The number of units sold only varied from the number of units shipped by 700k.

I don't know why annual PS2 sales (VGC) and shipped (Sony) data is so different, but the end result puts reasonable values. I'm choosing to trust VGC (for now) and believe Sony is overshipping PS2's because they want to discontinue the product and use that factory for something else. However I do aknowledge that VGC probably has remote areas in the Middle East, Africa and Asia poorly tracked.

I'm just going to end this, with an answer of "I don't know anymore." It's going to be close.

P.S. If you want PS2 sales history from VGC from 2008-2011, I have it all recorded on excel sheets. I wrote the values as they included them in the weeks, but didn't update them for adjustments. Still, the numbers are good......well, maybe not after reading your post lol.