Ladies and gentlemen of VGchartz I would like to make a statement!

I've been thinking about all those threads that say things like "System undertracked sales number!" and the responses are always the same ... shipped! now I'm pretty sure ioi said something about no more shipped vs sold threads but hear me out! (please dont ban me D:) I'm not trying to stir up shit im just making an observation on the business of the console war.

I KNOW that all these numbers are nigh impossible to have one hundred percent accurate and it IS a pain when people claim things are undertracked however i think its important when discussing sales to have BOTH numbers but the important thing is to be able to DIFFRINTIATE clearly and not troll when siting numbers and LABEL them accordingly when discussing

sure SOLD is important and thats what this site shows it shows the numbers that PSWII60 have moved into peoples homes and in there living rooms HOWEVER, if we are talking about the companies all that matters to THEM is shipped! I mean when amazon or any other retailer buys X amount of consoles sony/microsoft/nintendo have already made the money on those consoles! its in the bank! those consoles can stay in amazon forever not 1 person needs to buy it and sony has already made money! 

HOWEVER

if amazon dosnt sell the console off course they wont order more and thus sony makes no more money SO there is a synergy here!

In addition shipped helps show off demand by retailers! If xbox has shipped X amount of consoles but only sold y amount it can show sales trends! if it sells significantly less then we know that sales are dropping etc... and honestly if we are talking about console wars sony vs microsoft or what have you SHIPPED is the REAL factor because after all thats the money in the bank for them! (of course ps3 is selling at a loss but thats besides the point)

Shipped shows how much demand retailers have on each consoles respective manufacturer!

finally it SEAMS that shipped numbers are much more reliable in some cases because they come strait from the source and theres usualy very little question of there acuracy as they come DIRECTLY from manufacture representatives so it can REALLY make a big difference when discussing sales

In closing i have a site suggestion if i may (again please dont ban me D:)

i think that in addition to the console sales pillars or rather on the pillars themselves should be a clear overlaying pillar that shows shipped numbers for each respective console and then we would have the sold numbers as usual you could even throw down a little number that shows the difference so we can get an idea of how many consoles are sitting on store shelves.

I think the problem with shipped figures is that they can represent faulty replacement units and retailer demo units, so it's not as useful in discerning software attachment rates. Also the manufacturer's don't issue PR statements every week detailing the latest shipped figures so an 'overlaying pillar' would be exceeded over time.

I do however, think it would be great to have continuously updated links (with dates) underneath the charts redirecting to the latest shipped PR statements from each of the manufacturer's though.

I considered that problem and thought perhaps there were more statements then there actualy are however your idea is actualy very good :D

Basically what Fumanchu said. Accurate shipped numbers (from the companies) only come out every 4 months, and they do not necessarily break it down to regions or anything. So it would be nice to have links for the latest quarterly statements.

Every quarter when the companies announce their shipment numbers (for the 1/4 and LTD) The Source puts those numbers into an article and analyses them against predictions and projections. Not quite sure what else you want / need.

This site used to have a very nice chart with the shipment figures for all the major territories but starting with the Q1 of 2007, Sony and MS stopped providing shipment figures to all 3 major territories so the chart could no longer be updated properly except for Nintendo consoles.

Those articles are great - but they're not on the front page the following week let alone the next 3 months.  If you don't know what quarter of what financial year each company is in it can be hard to search for these numbers.  Having constant links on the front page make it very easy for people.

But every company can "flood the canals" as we call it meaning they overstock their products to a distributer and as such ,have a fabricated shipped number that doesnt correlate with the demand of the product........making shipped numbers virtually useless in our discussions.

@ jesus )

I always wondered what people mean by "flooding the canals". Is it really an active process? I mean, do the companies do it by reducing the price for large quantity orders, so that stores/chains fill up their stocks or can companies just ship out more than the store ordered?

If it's the former, then I don't see a big difference to the item being actually in good retailer demand.

There is no way a company can constantly "flood the canals", so shipped numbers never are "virtually useless" in sales discussions, as it will be a good representation of those in at least 2 of 4 quarterly figures and for lifetime sales, especially the further we are into a generation, as world wide inventories are limited.

Companies can't survive doing it perpetually, but everyone has channel stuffed at one point or another, and almost always early in platform's cycle for competitive reasons.  Nintendo did it with GameCube in 2002, to try and keep pace with Xbox.  Sony did it with PSP for it's first year and a half on market to appear to keep pace with DS.  360 did in late 2006 to hit that 10 million figure before year's end.  Every incident of channel stuffing usually follows with a period of extremely slowed shipments though, it's more a short term tactic.