fordy said:
The only thing that the shipped figure does is tell you your hard ceiling figure. It has some small relevance to retail sales, but there is potential for a massive buffer between the two... |
Shipped tells you much more than that. You see, only on rare occasions can a manufactorer stuff the channel. Usually when a console first launches or when there is a new model and/or large price cut. Other than that, retailers are not just going to except excess stock to fill up their warehouses. So, for example, if VGC charts shows that there are 3M+ PS3s sitting on shelves (as it did before we had a large adjustment in '13), its quite reasonable for people to conclude that the console is undertracked. I believe the standard supply is estimated to be 500K-1.5M, depending on the time of the year.
@ OP
A 100K difference isn't that big of a deal. It's well within the 10% tolerance this site tries to mantain.
