Alexie Di Onie said:
Jack Tretton himself said it on CNBC. And he very specifically says that they have sold 5.5 million units instead of the 6 million that they wanted to sell. Does he mean he wanted to create more because they really havent sold 5.5 million? |
... To act like they sell more than they really do Well, sony never sold that many to retailers even. Their goal was never to sell 6 million by March 31, it was to ship that many. They "shipped" 5.5 million, and their definition of "ship" is closer to "manufacture" than what you'd think of when you heard ship. They literally shipped 3.6 million to retailers, which is what they claimed they sold.
I can't find Sony's press release now, but I'm certain it said they shipped 5.5 million and sold 3.6 million, those 3.6 million having been ordered by retailers. 3.6 million was the upper-bounds on sales of the PS3 to consumer -- VGChartz had them at 3.3 million at that point, and considering the level of stock people were reporting in stores that seemed a little high.
A more honest description would be:
- Sony produced 5.5 million PS3's as of March 31, 2007.
- Sony shipped 3.6 million units to retailers as of March 31, 2007.
Sony was basically playing semantics and attempting to make their numbers sound better if you didn't look closely at what they really meant or if you were a fanboy and wanted to believe what they were feeding you. People suggested Microsoft was stretching reality when they stuffed the retail channel with 10.4 million units 7 months before they sold 10.4 million units to customers but Sony is certainly misleading more actively by redefining what is typically accepted by "shipped".
For reference, Microsoft often uses "shipped" and "sold" interchangably, because they count units ordered by retailers as "sold" and they are "shipped" as they send them to the retailers. Shipped should not mean "shipped from factories to warehouses" as Sony chose to define it.
