That's a very good point... NPD only said that the 360 will exceed 4.5 million units sold for 2006. Who knows how far it will exceed it? You're perfectly right in theorizing that the total may be much higher, but at least we know the bare minimum is 5.1 million US sales. When actualy figures are released it could be much higher, and I appreciate you pointing that out, NoIdea! And just to be clear, every NPD number that ever existed is an "estimate". However, they're probably the most reliable and you can generally take their estimate to the bank.

And that number isn't an official estimate. Also, it doesn't even say "exceed". God, how can one person (Monty) be so ignorant?

Why are you so opposed to the estimates to the point you're questioning my mental abilities? That seems odd. Anyhow, we know (and most here agree) that the number was 4.9 million in the USA as of Dec 25th. It's not that much of a stretch to say another 200k was sold in the last 6 days of 2006 (that was the average). In other words, if the NPD estimate is off, it ain't going to be by much at all... one way or the other. Anyhow, please don't let the NPD upset you so much with their estimates. This is only for fun, and if the 360 exceeds 5.1 million, you really shouldn't let it upset you that much, unless you have stock in Sony.

Ok, a simple excersize. The xbox360 shipped around 10 million by the end of the year, right? In order to have close to a 10 million sold (to users) it should be almost sold out everywhere, right? Sorry, but people see plenty of xbox360 available in stores all the time. If most stores sold about 80% of the xbxo360 they recived (pretty decend number) then the sales are close to what we see on the charts here. Just my 2-cents.

So, let me get this straight now... most of you are agreeing with me that vgcharts is off by around 400k in North America, but now you're saying that by pointing it out I was "petty" and "ridiculous"? I must admit that this is entertaining, to say the least. I'm curious about a few things, though: First off, at what point should I have mentioned it, if 400k wasn't enough of a difference? Am I not allowed to say anything until it gets to 1 million in NA? Secondly, if it's off by 400k in NA (the easiest to track region), don't you at all think it's possible that it's off in the other areas that are much harder to track? Is it odd that this doesn't concern anybody else, and everybody is swallowing whatever vgcharts tells you? Thirdly, is it not ok to question the stats, and why was I attacked so much for bringing this up, even though I proved the 360 numbers do not add up correctly? Lastly, are you people not interested in making this place more accurate, and better? If this was my site, I would welcome discussions like this, and thank anybody that pointed out any errors. There is a lot of stuff that makes me very curious about this community!

In early Dec (or late Nov), MS announced they were on track to sell "over" 10 million units (you can Google this). We, of course, don't know how far over, and it's highly likely that by "sell", MS meant "sold to retailers" (ie, what we routinely called "shipped"). Without knowing the exact shipped number at this point, we couldn't really draw logical conclusions about the sales from that alone.

Monty, you are really soo laughable. Oh, and Japan is easiest to track. (VGCharts numbers are about 100k too high for that region, BTW)

North America is a continent. Japan is a country. When I say NA is the easiest to track, I would say it is much easier to track than Asia (where Japan in located). If I had said the USA was the easiest to track, your response about Japan would have made some sense, but that's not what I said, so your response leaves me a little confused. It's like if I said that France was the easiest to track, and you responded "no, Sacramento, California is". As for your claim that vgcharts is wrong about Japan, I'd have to refer you to them, but I think you're arguing on my side if you're trying to say that vgcharts has some obvious flaws. So, I'm also confused why you directed that my way?

Japan is a region, is it not? And X360 has only sold 234,381 consoles in Japan and it says .32million here. But who cares if it is not exact. As long as it isn't too far off, no problem with it.

There are no numbers for Mexico and the NPD Canada numbers are no where to be found . They do track Canada video game market it says on their site where are the numbers are no one knows. I don't think vgcharts are off by 400,000 considering no data for NPD have been given even the estimate that people say are from them they are not claiming them. http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2007/01/03/npd-clarifies-december-sales-info/ This site made an educated guess at what the numbers should be the numbers will be out on the 11th so any discussion about how using NPD numbers for December are useless. I think their guess is within 5% of the real total not the 30% (9.5 million)that you keep pushing. The Japan numbers are off because of the sale on week one of December they saw a jump to 34,000 but they do need to correct it back down to the only 17,000 per week average. I don't see how them overestimating adds to your argument that they are underestimating the total it would seem the other way maybe MS only sold 7 million WW. Using Japan as an example of how this site overestimates things.