SCEA's spokesperson Kimberly Otzman responded to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Black Friday sales figure claims, casting doubt on the 360s trouncing of the PlayStation 3. In case you missed it, Microsoft reported it outsold the PS3 by two to one for the Thanksgiving week. She disputed the ratio, commenting that "Microsoft's estimates of our PS3 unit sales numbers are way off and they did not outsell PS3 2:1 during Black Friday week."

http://kotaku.com/gaming/console-wars/sony-microsoft-is-way-off-on-ps3-sales-328198.php

The fight for second place has begun!

They both were using data from their top 10 best. So likely neither. In this case. Sony... though it's probably close.

I expect 1.7-1.9 considering how both sides spin.

Believe them both, basically.

Microsoft said that they roughly outsold Sony 2:1, based on early retailer estimates. There's clearly a lot of rounding in that statement.

Given that Sony has declined to give actual figures, it's likely they were outsold... 1.8:1, or 1.75:1, or something along those lines. Not 2:1, but close enough that denying the charges does nothing but make them look petty, and they were heavily outsold in either case.

I'd be very interested in finding out when Sony implemented this "no hard figures" policy. Given that none other than the CEO of the entire company was happy to deliver hard figures not three weeks ago, it seems quite likely that this policy was instituted around 5 minutes before their press release.

It's too bad Sony is apparently too spineless to simply just give out their numbers like Microsoft and Nintendo have. Instead they keep pulling everybody's leg with this percentage crap trying to manipulate numbers.

If it's not true sony, give us YOUR sales estimates for last week. You certainly had no problem doing it 2 weeks ago when you boasted that you sold 100,000 units that week.

Not Sony, they are the only ones that haven't given out hard numbers. Usually when a company touts a percentage sales increase without giving the actual number of units sold they are masking a poorer than expected showing. I mean take the 360 in Japan. Anytime its sales spike, it has a ridiculous percentage increase but thats because the baseline sales level is so low.

Their policy is to release the numbers AFTER npd numbers are released, not to keep them unreleased forever...

Ugh, "spineless" isn't the right word. You can bet your booty that Microsoft and Nintendo would be doing the same sort of numbers-spinning if they were in Sony's position. In fact, if I remember last generation correctly, they did; there was lots of talk of percentages and year over year improvements and the like from both companies. Hard, concrete sales figures were difficult to come by when the companies in question were getting trounced by their competition.

That isn't spineless or sneaky, it's just typical business acumen. If you don't like it, then you don't like modern business strategy in general. Which is okay -- it is a rather devious environment -- but it isn't an issue particular to Sony.  

Here is how I imagine things have happened:

As we know, some time ago Sony released news about crazy percentage increases (298% or whatever). Microsoft probably understood they were spinning some number, so they decided to release their own numbers (possibly with a bit of spin too), and PS3 numbers too (indirectly, through the 2:1 ratio). Sony would look ridiculous if they gave out numbers which contradicted their earlier percentage increases, so they just denied MS's report and invented a new policy of "not giving out numbers until no one cares because NPD has already released them".

You can call it whatever you want, Sony is going to end up being the only company not giving out some kind of official estimate this week while still calling another company a liar. 

Every company selectively chooses information to release on occasion, but it's clear this generation Sony has been doing this kind of crap the whole time much more than anybody else.   

Sony is doing what Microsoft and Nintendo should be doing and waiting for the NPD results and then commenting.