Damn, you pretty much beat me.  And only by one post.  I guess great minds think alike. 

i hope there over shipping many thought the same from like jan-sept this year and then we saw what happen to the vgc numbers

if ya'll thought sony was over shipping july-sep was bad when 360 had its relaunch, 199 model, halo and was outselling the ps3 weekly and outsold the ps3 by 500k what do you think the shipped numbers are going to look come jan 2011 for Oct-Dec? when vgc has sony outselling it all of Oct and recent numbers are farly close between it and the other HD despite kenict and COD launch

We have the same problem where I work (Wal-Mart). However, they aren not just doing it with the PS3  It's every system. Microsoft was just as evil by overshipping us the 4gig with Kinects which aren't sell as well as the 250gigs with Kinects. I think we are sitting on a 60 OS of PS3's. However, keep in mind this is the holiday season so those PS3's could sell out by the end of the year (I think ours will).

its not sony's fault

If Sony overships this Quarter, it'll show next Quarter. MS has been guilty of that when they overshipped for the Holiday season and only shipped like 500K the next Quarter, so we'll only know the real story when we get the shipment figures for the quarter ending in March '11.

The number of products that a retail company gets from an specific provider are not decided by the stores, they're decided by the higher-ups at retail companies, so if OP is receiving a lot of PS3s, is not because Sony is forcing stores to stuff PS3s, it's because Gamestop did some decisions about PS3s (probably is a price-volume deal) based on their numbers analysis and because of that they have an overstock now (probably won't have it later), the other option is that someone screwed up an order (unlikely, but possible)...

There are companies that force others to buy some quantity of their products, but usually this happens when the company is in a very powerful position and can force arms (like Sony was with the PS2), and again, this is discussed at a corporate level.

So don't blame Sony, or MS or Nintendo for overstocking in retail stores, they only ship what the retail company wants them to ship...

if you build them, they will sell!

                       360                              PS3
Q4 2006       4.4                             
Q1 2007       0.5 (-88.6%)             

Q4 2007       4.3                               4.9
Q1 2008       1.3 (-69.8%)              2.2 (-55.1%)

Q4 2008       6.0                               4.5
Q1 2009       1.7 (-71.7%)              1.6 (-64.4%)

Q4 2009       5.2                               6.5
Q1 2010       1.5 (-71.2%)              2.2 (-66.2%)

Skipped the first holiday for both since they are both obviously outliers that wouldn't happen outside a launch period.

Anyways, I guess by your logic Microsoft always overships in calendar Q4 since they always have a sharper decline.

Also as for your original point, your data would show they stuff the channels from July to September.  How does that relate to the fact that the OP is getting too many PS3s now in December.

He's using one observation to make a universal claim about Sony's business practices. I can't think of any logical system under which this would be considered a valid argument form. On technicality, I agree this is better than just making a claim with no evidence to support it, but both arguments would still be wrong. Even if this is not an isolated situation, this does not do anything to validate the OP's argument since his argument explicitly used just one case study. LivingMetal is not challenging the accuracy of the claim that Sony overshipped, he is just saying the argument form used by the OP is invalid.

One store = the world.