not compared to 300,000 360s, their numbers are off somewhere

I'm pretty sure most of us use "overshipped" as that Sony overestimated the demand for the PS3.. and produced more PS3's then the demand needed..  Cause a company doesn't want to have a large pile of inventory sitting on the shelves and having the factories producing more stuff then needed.. because that costs money.. a perfect company have demand and production at equal level..

Firstly, doesn't Sony use JITP (Just in Time production) to some extent with the PS3? That would prove this point wrong, but I'm not sure about this.

Also, If Sony produced more consoles that retailers ordered, they can't just ship them anyway. It's more likely cheaper to leave them sitting in the warehouse.

Also take into account that Sony numbers have always been high in comparison to sales numbers - surely they can't overestimate demad constantly?

What I would see is plausible is that retailers overestimated and ordered too many PS3's - but this isn't bad for Sony, and doesn't mean Sony numbers are wrong.

Anyway, I think Sony and VGC numbers are correct (except I think 360 consumer sales are a tad lower).

360 consumer sales are the most likely cause in my opinion.

The ratio of PS3s on shelves to 360s on shelves is a bit wrong to me, and I see 2M shelves in consoles being more reasonable than 300,000.

360 shipments were very low last quarter in preparation for the new model.  Im sure at the next quarterly figures the difference between shipped to sold thru will be much higher again for 360.

Nonsense. Foxconn manufactures exactly the numbers of PS3s/XBox360/IPods/Whatever that its contractors planned and ordered for the current fiscal year. There is no "lets's make a few more/less units". How many units are shipped to the contractors is detailed down to the day of delivery.  Changing the contract(s) on-the-fly is of course possible, but costs a fortune for the contractor so it is never done (unless changes would be in the >50% region for extended periods of time).

I might buy that if there wasn't ps3 shortages not to long ago

My god no.   You can't use Just in time shipping on expensive consumer electronics.   Do you know how many contracts you need to schedule ahead of time that can't be changed with factories?

Besides, Sony had TONS of PS3's sitting in wharehouses back when the PS3 first started.  You can see that in their financial reports when they changed from shipped meaning "In our wharehouses waiting to be sold" to "Sold to retailers."

They even had to do massive markdowns on the value of PS3s when they did the pricedrop based on the fact that the assets value dropped due to their dropping the prices.

You can't really do just in time shipping with such complex stuff.  The best you can do is hope you pinpoint demand perfectly... but that's a VERY hard thing to do.

Just In time marketing is really more talk then anything else unless you control and own all the means of production for your product.

Like say... GM who makes all of their car parts.  Despite being complicated they can control exactly how much they make of each thing.  Even then it may be hard because I don't know if they have contracts for raw matierals.

Besides... overshipping could be the case... but 2 million seems unlikely considering there were shortages a few months ago.  Ioi's explinations just make the most sense.

There has always been a disconnect between Sony's numbers and the trackers numbers.  The number has been growing for months and months and anybody could see this was going to happen.  No doubt both Vgchartz and Sony are both right... it's just a matter of pinning down Sony's definitions.

so do I, which makes me think maybe their ps3 numbers are fine and their numbers are too high for the 360 

Haha, Yea, I suppose.

I just had an impression the japanese were a bit JIT crazy.