Usually, yes, but often they'll reference data provided by retailers to ballpark sell through to consumers. Notice he said "in just a few days", which implies it wasn't shipment figures he was referring to.

doesnt matter. most people will take this as sold as its coming straight from sonys mouths.

i believe when sony says sold they mean sold and not shipped. im pretty sure sony have ties with retailers too.

if we talking shipped then im pretty sure god of war 3 has already shipped 3-4 million by now. even some small countries had shipment of like 200-300k. america probably has 2 million shipped alone.

Perhaps it is undertracked here. Remember what happened with Final Fantasy XIII? Why not the same thing with God of War 3?

@rccsetzer

Possibly....lets w8 and see if it is.

The game deserves more sales its real good

What the article actually said was

"in "just a couple days" after the game launched."

Which is meaningless of course. Sloppy journalism on the part of ign australia (SHOCK!) We could speculate as to whether the 'in' or the 'after the game launch' was the verbal equivalent of a typo.

However, I am not going to do the running around proving or disproving anything. A Sony exec reporting sold to customers numbers is almost unheard of. So the onus of proof is upon your head. If I had to guess, the guy was referring to USA sold to retailers numbers. That way, the total sold to retailers on the 20th was 1 million (4 days after launch is about the highest for which it's justifiable to use the phrase 'a couple'), and the total sold to consumers at that point was about 630k (Using USA sales = Americas sales * 0.9) That way there would be enough stock on shelves to last until the next shipment arrives.

For more, 'IGN articles are written by a dozen monkeys on a half dozen, mostly broken typewriters' lulz, they got the release date for God of War III wrong in that article. They claimed it was released on the 18th in Europe and 19th in Australia. Wrong way round, chumps.

Oh and eggs2see. I fail to see how you interpret my statement as Sony bashing. What frequently happens on this website is that a source reports sold numbers, meaning sold to retailer, not sold consumer because this is the only thing that any of the publishers and developers have access to. People misinterpret this, and send very unpleasantly worded messeges to ioi, who calmly explains to the people exactly what I'm currently explaining to you. They of course react with "Mmmm love me some good [insert whatever company is currently under discussion here] bashing". I was trying to save ioi from this inevitable onslaught, and now it seems that I have to deal with people getting pissed at me. Actually, I don't have to deal with it cos I care not one jot what you think. So yes, I hate Sony and I personally urinate on copies of God of War 3 in order to prevent people from buying them.