From this interview, another part of which is being discussed in another thread. Emphasis mine:

Q: Do you guys have any projections of what you expect to sell this holiday season?

A: Sure. We expect to sell 33 million pieces of hardware across the three platforms. And that breaks out to 12 million PS 2s, 11 million PS 3s, and 10 million PlayStation Portables, and then we don’t break out software, but our forecast is 250 million units of software across those three platforms.

Q: And are those worldwide numbers, and that’s shipping numbers, is that right?

A: Worldwide numbers, and they’re sales, not shipment numbers.

Q: OK, but sales meaning that’s how many you get into consumers’ hands? Or does that mean you consider it a sale when it goes to a retailer?

A: We consider it a sale when it goes to a consumer.

Q: And that is for March 31?

A: That is correct.

Q: So Jack, that’s not Christmas numbers, that’s year-end numbers.

A: That’s correct. By the end of our fiscal, March 31, ‘08.

 

 

My questions are:

1- Are they changing their tune regarding whether their financial forecasts are LTD or for the fiscal year?

2- Are they seriously trying to convince us that they report sold-to-consumers numbers in their fiscal reports??

I don't think it will fly, it doesn't make any sense given that those forecasts are given in fiscal reports. I could give you thousands of links from respected publications which say that those forecasts are for the fiscal year, and for shipped consoles.

Is he trying to spread some confusion due to the fact that they're obviously going to miss their fiscal forecasts? Some people were predicting that Sony would do this, but it still amazes me.

 

lol. I think the next three and a bit months will be very interesting.

The PS3 will have to sell 2.5mil at least between Jan-Mar... I don't see that happening...

The PS3 will probably end up at 10mil or somewhere around that area.

Well as allways they are confident ... lets hope that this forecast can become at least partially true :?

If you're talking about sales over a particular fiscal period (where you neither have an unexpected shortage of units nor a building surplus) your sold to retailer numbers should be roughly equal to your sold to consumer numbers.

Basically, a retailer will want to carry a certain number of units depending on how popular a system is and this number will (probably) not change drastically unless the popularity of a system changes drastically; therefore they should be replacing a sold to customer unit with a unit they bought from Sony.

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo don't actually track sales of software/hardware themselves but they do estimate sold to consumer numbers using an equation that would (roughly) work out to be:

Sold To Retailers - Retailer Inventory = Sold To Customers

The equation would be more complicated than that because they would have to calculate retailer inventory, but the core idea of the equation would remain intact.

Even if GTA IV/MGS4 IV/Little Big Planet/Devil May Cry 4/ etc coincided in Jan-Mar with another $100 price cut, I have difficulty seeing Sony selling 11 million PS3s in their fiscal year (Apr 1 2007 - Marc 31 2008)

Sales are ~400k per week.

Say PS3 hits 8.0 million by Dec 30, 2007.

They'll have 13 weeks to sell 5.2 million more units this fiscal year (because by March 31, 2007 Sony had already sold 2.8 million PS3s)

If sales are 400k/week during the peak weeks of the year, then its hard to imagine them topping 200k week - on average in the 13 weeks of Jan-March 2008.

8.00 + (.2)(13) = 10.6 million LTD for PS3  by 4/1/2008.  Shipments are probably going to hit 12-13 million, possibly higher, depending on GTAIV's exact release, further price cuts, etc.  Again, taking out what Sony sold pre Apr 2007, then Sony will have sold 7.8 million PS3s - at best - by April 1 2008, and shipped 9-10 million PS3s over the period.  A $150 price drop, higher than expected Japanese sales, etc, would be necessry to hit 11 million shipped even in a best case scenario. 

200k may not sound like much per week, but sales for January 1 2007 to April 1 2007 averaged only 120k per week for PS3 - even with the nearly 600k Euro-launch aided week (March 25)

If GTAIV launched without a price cut, sales would probably be more like 140k to 180k per week for Jan-Mar. 

 

@HappySqurriel

Don't Sony/MS/Nintendo just use NPD, MediaCreate/Famitsu, Charttrack/GFk etc.. to do the tracking for them? All seem to quote their numbers enough when releasing a statement.

So Jack, tell us about sales expectations in holiday season - 11 million

he is too funny.

jhlennon1 said: The PS3 will have to sell 2.5mil at least between Jan-Mar... I don't see that happening... The PS3 will probably end up at 10mil or somewhere around that area.

They are numbers that they expect to sell this fiscal year, not LTD. Or, where they throw 15 million PSP:s and 110 million PS2:s, which have already been sold to customer. So, PS3 needs to sell a lot more than 2,5M, unless it reaches 10-11M LTD in 31.12.2007. They make a new forecast in january and may have a twist in april about the numbers. Why a new forecast in january? It's because that's when they release offial Q3 financials, and they can't deliberately make an over-optimistic forecast about the sales in offial statements and they also can't lie about the sales.

Basically parroting what is printed in their official statement, except in a very deceptive way.

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/07q2_eleki.pdf