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Leadified on 12 October 2017
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Wright said:
Leadified said:

The last shipment stated by Sony was 80 million in November 2013 while MS posted a 84 million shipment in June 2014.  The IDC suggests that the PS3 was ahead of the 360 (77 to 76) as of December 2012, how they got that data is not clear. No one really knows for sure who ended up on top but the general consensus seems to be that the PS3 managed to eventually edge out the 360.

The numbers of IDC must be wrong because MS reported 76m of Xbox 360s being sold by February 2013. It's impossible that MS had reached that milestone by December 2012, and I'm fairly sure Sony's numbers are off too, as there's sources of them selling 70m PS3s by November 2012.

This is where numbers get extremely weird, as apparently MS's first fiscal quarter of 2013 establishes a 70m sales figure as well. But somehow, they also made the 76m milestone in February of 2013. Outside that 70m PS3 source I provided, VGsales only indicates that by the end of 2012's fiscal year PS3 has sold approximatedly 63.9m and that Sony stopped giving shipment figures afterward. This is probably the part where I get a bit lost, as there's two different numbers being provided.

Wikipedia states that Xbox 360 is still on top of PS3, the former having 84m sales reported, and the later, 83.6m (approximatedly). The only thing Wikipedia adds to this are the following note/statements:

PlayStation 3: A Sony press release reported 80 million sold as of November 2, 2013.[23] 3.4 million were shipped in 2014 and 0.4 million in the first quarter of 2015. (Doesn't specify where did they take these numbers)

By October, 2013, Xbox 360 reached the http://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-360-sales-reach-80-million-units/1100-6415644/">80m figure milestone, a month prior of Sony's milestone. While looking at this now, it certainly looks more plausible that PS3 eventually edged 360, but it also means that by June 2014, which is when Xbox 360 reached the 84m milestone, PS3 was still in third place. I think last time I made calculations going from both the 80m and 84m figures onwards using VGC data and 360 still came on top.

Yeah, the only thing that we can really go on is the official shipments from Sony and MS since the third party figures are all over the place. It's a bit annoying that Sony stops publishing figures, they did the same thing with the PS2 and PSP so we'll never know the final tally.