maybe for you but at my walmart they have been sold out for the past week..so it's not a rep. of both your's an my area as the entire US. each state and city is going to not be the same.

Seems unlikely Sony could just stuff the retail network to that extent.  In the end the retailer decides what they will buy, not Sony.  Sony can push hard but they can't make it happen.

In the current economic climate I'm skeptical that worldwide retailers would allow Sony to convince them to buy that much extra stock in excess of demand.

Retail may be overstocked to some extent, but I have to figure that the site has also under-tracked as that's just too much excess inventory to accept as probable.

I'm therefore taking the middle view that there is some under-tracking combined with some retail stuffing.

Bold - Overstocked the last three quarters for what??? And overstocked again, again and again... I agree with you... undertracked makes more sense.

2m is not "channel stuffing".  Channel stuffing was 360 in late 2006 to hit 10m (3 to 4m in channel), or PSP in late 2005/early 2006 to keep pace with DS (near 5m in channel).

Sony report the numbers ordered by retail as shipped, not the numbers actually produced. So it's not just the units produced but also those that have just been ordered. People seem to forget sony do this every time they report shipped numbers

Erm actually they list a console shipped as soon as they have an order for it. So the gap represents PS3s they have 'sold', PS3s on their way to stores and PS3s in storage which are owned by someone other than Sony. This doesn't mean that the PS3 isn't undertracked however, but it does explain how they can ship that many consoles without actually having stock.

So are you suggesting that there are about 2x as many PS3s on their way to shelves are there are 360s? (I cant remember the actual figures)

Some people just wont listen to reason. I say quit whilst your ahead. They will only drag you down then beat you with experiance.

The way Microsoft and Sony count their shipments is different and I never suggested that the PS3 couldn't be under-tracked. All I said was they count every order they recieve as shipped for the quarter they get them. The whole situation is messy so I don't feel confident that anyone could say Vgchartz is significantly wrong based off these recent quarterly results alone.

In light of last months NPD, which saw a pretty large difference form VGC and NPD which only tracks America and VGC which accounts for Canada, Central and South America, yet somehow, if Im remembering correctly, VGC was lower.....undertracked by a couple hundred thousand seems to be pretty reasonable.