By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
killer7 1 day ago
Edit Thread
Doctor_MG said:
Fight-the-Streets said:

I think Nintendo is very trustworthy with its numbers, as they even reported exact sales figures for the Wii U—even though they were terrible—and always provide numbers down to the second decimal place.

Sony's numbers, on the other hand, are inconsistent if you go through old (annual) reports and compare them with each other. This remains true even when considering that, starting from FY06 (ending March 31, 2007), Sony changed its reporting method from manufactured numbers to shipped numbers (= sell-in).

On Sony's Business Data & Sales homepage (https://sonyinteractive.com/en/our-company/business-data-sales/), they list "more than 160 million" as sell-in (= shipped), but it is unclear whether this number includes so-called unsold units, as Sony isn’t as trustworthy as Nintendo. The 160,636,885 figure refers to the number of units produced.

If we believe Sony and assume that the "more than 160 million" represents the true shipped numbers, then the 160,636,885 production figure must be incorrect—since it would imply that only 0.4% of units were demo, defective, broken, replacement, or spare parts. That can't be true!

PS2 numbers include refurbished and returned units. That would cover the majority of any broken, defective, or replaced units. In which case, a large amount of the .4% (which is hundreds of thousands of units) would be for demos and kiosks. Which is pretty believable to me. Take the US for example, one of the biggest chains here is Walmart and they have about 4,000 stores across the US, which was a huge market for the PS2. So having a few hundred thousand units for demo/kiosks across the world seems very realistic to me. 

I don't think, refurbished PS2s are part of this 160 million units, but for sure the demo stations for shops wich get sent back to Sony after the product's life is over. And you have to see that not only the original PS2 got demostations, in fact theee where also quire a few  demostations for PS2 Slim. As someone working at a software store i can tell you, some of them break (the PS2 DVD drive is known for having issues and demostations do not magically last forever as well) and they have to be replaced by new ones. So if you ask me, "a few hundred thousand units" is quite low. I would give it a million or more...