Sony could always lie, like MS with Windows Vista sales or Nintendo's Virtual Boy...

These two links should clear things up for people, one is the article on the sales for Sony's financial statement, the other is MSes the articles are 6 days apart 

http://www.psu.com/news/9465

ps3 sales 38.1 million

VGs ps3 sales is 36.1 million 

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=256931

360s sales at 41.7 million 

VGs 360s sales at 41.4

from these numbers I think it's pretty obvious that VG is just massively under tracking the ps3 compared to the 360, and remember both those numbers are from the financial report from each respective company so their both probably sold to retailers, so if VG chartz has any accuracy for ps3 sales it would mean that retailers have over 6 times as many ps3s as 360s in stock and thats obviously not the case

Whatevers happening its weird.

Like some said its HIGHLY UNLIKELY retailers would accept excess PS3 stock this quarter. I mean FFXIII, God Of War 3 were all last quarter. What did SONY have this quarter that would justify retailers thinking "OMG people we need more PS3's in store to sell".

Then again I trust VGChartz numbers, if its undertracked the problem will be solved soon.

If you trust VG chartz numbers then thats your problem this is the 3rd time I've seen it being way lower then Sony's financial report, VG seems to be accurate enough with 360 though, curious isn't it, maybe ps3 just sells massively more in less tracked countries then the 360

How often do we really get hard numbers from Gfk, and when we do, what countries do we get the numbers for? 

And are there any major trackers for the Latin American markets?

Without these figures, we can't do a proper comparison.  As far as I know, there's little to go on when saying VGChartz lines up with Gfk in some of the smaller/less tracked Others markets, and then there are markets (like the aforementioned Latin America) for which there are no official trackers that I know of.

Or it could just be over-stocked in stores.....Shipped doesn't always mean sold.

If you go into any shop your see lots of PS3's just sitting on the shelves. If these figures are right they would not be there as it indicates demand would have to be a lot higher. 2m higher. That would have effect on stores numbers which would be noticable. The same goes for VGC tracking. If it was higher it would be noticable to the stores who give data to the site. The fact it hasen't again just shows demand is not as high as it was. In my view that is all that has happened. A fair few months agao PS3 had a slight problem getting stock in. As they cramped up production demand fell, hence why you see the numbers.

As for the whole VGC doesn't track right because of NPD has it higher thing. If you actually look at the NPD/VGC numbers your see for the past 12 months PS3 has been over-tracked 9 times. Last month it was higher because it was 5 weeks data not 4 as is normally the case. There have been a few times when PS3 has been over-tracked by 100k this year. Yet you don't hear people mentioning those times, i wonder why?

for god sakes npd numbers are guestimates aswell everyone in this thread has thought they were truth numbers

lol you know the biggest conspiracy theory? Ppl trying to downplay the numbers released by the company itself as lies :D meltdowns and damage control are high

npd is US only. 

Looks like 360 is going to get rocked by ps3 soon!