There's a problem somwhere, I don't know where but there sure is a roblem, because 2,326,037 on shelves...

no problem i only bump the best

i was going to make this back in august never got around good thing you did it cause im barely on here now, im might edit my post up there in the future and revise your data to show years starting from jan to dec instead of when the companys start it

This may look right in your eyes but it is simply NOT how mass manufacturing at this level works. There are many reasons why it works differently (and all of those 123456789 reasons have to do with minimizing manufacturing costs). So this is how it really works (rather simplified, taking Sony's PS3 as an example):

-At some time point before every new fiscal year, Japan headquarters wants a final table from all its regions on how many PS3's they want to buy per quarter. It is up to every region to figure out the demand in that region (using all the previous economical data, talking with all major distributors, economical forecasts, knowing what plans lay ahead for the PS3 in every quarter of the new fj, etc, etc.). The last sentence is particularly interesting because last year, when Sony announced 14mio shipping, everyone (including me) went "Whoa...never gonna happen", and in the end Sony exactly shipped 14mio units. (Actually makes me wonder what they now have in store for this time to get to 15mio units....)

-All numbers are added up and (after cross-checking with headquarter projections for consistency) manufacturing orders are sealed with the manufacturers. From that point on, everything is fixed, cast into iron, written in stone... you get the point. There is _no possibility for any changes_ now, the point of no return is crossed  (unless you really wanted to make a manufacturing change which would cost a fortune). 

-If some region head made a miscalculation/misestimation, some distributor goes belly-up or thinks they need more/less because the PS3 is "hot right now"/"a door stop", tough luck. There is no "Let's make a few PS3s more for that region, Let's shift some PS3s from A to B". Every region gets exactly the allotted numbers for every quarter. (Exactly that happened this calendar year in NA with a week long draught while Europe/Asia was sitting on its stock).

I had a reply for ya, but I updated the OP and in posting that my reply got lost. Basically I was going to say that all you've said doesn't back up nor go against what I said. Sure the manufacturing is pretty much a constant level year-round, but consumer demand affects retailer demand which is where the shipment numbers come from. Fiscal projections have been changed in the past, due to increases/decreases in demand.

Anyway, I've finally got DS and PSP tables up now too. It's clear that the DS was overtracked in its first quarter. I'll update again in a week with MS's new numbers, and then two weeks for Nin and Sony.

Updated with shipment numbers from the July-September quarter.

My personal take: I expected just about everything to be shipped>sold. The PS3 is the only one that really lived up to that expectation, but the gap is quite a bit larger than I'd have expected. Available data from other tracking firms are pretty close to VGC numbers. Thus I think either everyone is undertracking a bit or retailers are expecting a large demand for PS3s these holidays.
The handhelds were both slightly shipped>sold, so nothing too shocking there imo.
And on the other end, both the 360 and Wii were just a hair shipped<sold. I would've expected their gaps to increase in this quarter as the trend usually goes. With Nintendo at least, we know their projections for the fiscal year, so they must be sitting on a ton of units for the next quarter, hoping consumer demand will cause retailers to order up.

Major adjustments to PS3, minor for 360, Wii, and DS. No change with PSP, but the shipped total may change soon.

I'm happy to bump this thread back on the front page so it can get some attention, but I don't want it to look like I'm talking to myself, so I'll likely just edit this post once the OP is updated.

EDIT: you already accounted for it. Anyways, according to SCEJ they shipped about 62m PSPs.

Maybe you should put a * with a note directly below the PSP lifetime shipment totals as I missed the note at the top.

Thanks for the pointers, moved the notes down to the corresponding tables. I also found the "update" from TGS which I'm assuming was shipped numbers, which would put the PSP total at 63.5M now. So I added an extra line with that as the shipped total.

great thread. it's funny how it basically "predicted" the recent adjustments on PS3. Most of that weight was put on october though so it won't appear in your table for a while.

If anything this table is a testament to how efficient the adjustments VGC makes are. The gaps vary, but never by too wide a margin.

Updated(Finally) with the October-December quarter reports and sellthrough numbers. I also updated old quarters with any sellthrough adjustments made:

Judging from the current differences I can make a "prediction" of things to come. I'd either expect X360, Wii, and DS to be further adjusted down, with PS3 and PSP numbers staying relatively the same OR I'd expect a fairly large positive difference between shiped and sold for X360, Wii, and DS, with just about anything for PS3 and PSP.