I think it's because Brazil must be another US state soon. Wasn't there a thread about the 51st state coming soon? I guess it's Brazil.

Why not, it would help stabilize Brazil's inflation and the country is doing well with bio fuel.

(just kidding!)

By convinced They mean money was involved

And if this is true, then i have lost all my respect for NPD as they should be counting numbers of systems sold to distributors for the PS3 and Wii as well.  :)

Well, yes, overall shipped should stay the same.  That's not really what I'm arguing, though.  The point is, if Pachter is correct, than MS has gotten NPD to count some shipments to distributors as sold to customers in the US.  And as he said, some even made their way into another country, so those definitely shouldn't have been counted as sales in the US at all.  Really, I don't care what MS wants to do to shift its shipment numbers to make it look like its doing better in the US, in the end the overall shipment numbers would still remain the same.  My real problem comes from a supposed unbiased 3rd party (NPD) being "convinced" to go along with MS on this.  If they are doing it for MS, then why not start doing it for Sony and Nintendo?  Not only would it now be fair, it would also make them appear to be doing much better in the US, as well.

Also, why are some of you focusing on the promotion?  I already stated that wasn't the issue, and that those consoles given away should be included.

Rogers isnt established in the states? Im in canada and its the leading Cell phone/internet provider. 

Do you still believe what Pachter says? He's nothing more than a really successful troll.

They're trying to take over the world!

How is that any different than me buying, say, 40 360's and exporting them to some other country and sell it at a premium for personal gain?? Doesn't this type of thing happen for any device?

In fact, it is very well documented that personal businesses and people alike were buying truck loads of iPads and shippinp them overseas and making a killing. Making it almost impossible for a legitimate consumer to find one. No ONE held that against Apple when sales figures were released.

And like someone else said, everybody hates Pachter and call him names but when he says something more to their liking he is the man and the ultimate of reliable sources. Sheesh.

..not even patcher.  patcher as interpreted via theSource which makes it even worse.  i'm with kowen, the whole OP is garbage, shipment numbers which release very soon here is the one number to care about.

Let me get the gist of this argument. Tracking sales of cross promotion bundled systems is wrong, and distributors are not considered to be consumers. Excuse me while I laugh my ass off. This isn't new this has always been the way things have been. At least for this generation. Every manufacturer sells to distributors, because distributors allow for truly global sales of their products. No company tracks beyond the place of sale, because they have no obligation beyond the point of sale. The market where the sale takes place is where the sale is going to be reported. Every manufacturer will account in this fashion.

Ironically sales to distributors do not fundamentally function differently from local sales, because the distributor that buys systems to sell in small markets is also going to buy software for export to those markets. So even if a console is in say Argentina the purchases that accompany that console will still be made in the market of origin. So you really should think of those consoles as still being in the region where they were purchased.

On to the matter of cross bundled hardware. Really Microsoft doing this is detestable. What of Sony and all of the cross promotion sales they did with movies and television sets. I am sorry, but as far as this goes this generation. The worst culprit is Sony. Microsoft would come next, and then you would get Nintendo. Well for the obvious reason that they have nothing to cross promote with. So just about every console sale by Nintendo in the current generation was stand alone.

Anyway why would anyone think that Sony and Nintendo aren't counting distributor sales. They obviously must be doing exactly that. Otherwise their shipped/sold numbers would have a much larger margin. Perhaps five to even six million units by this point in a generation if distributor sales weren't being counted. The only truly interesting thing in this thread is a distributor sale by Microsoft was worthy of note. I am kind of curious as to which player is actually dominating in the South America region. This may become more important over time.

he actually answers emails?