Even though they're using consoles shipped this doesn't make sense. The 360 has shipped 17.7m, the Wii has sold 19.54m yet they claim the 360's sold more :-s

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/01/04/wii_to_beat_360/

Microsoft has sold 17.7m Xbox 360 games consoles since the machine was introduced in late 2005, 4.3m of them since the beginning of October 2007, the company claimed yesterday.

That almost certainly means the Microsoft console has outsold Sony's PlayStation 3, though that machine only went on sale a year after the Xbox 360 did. That's true of the Nintendo Wii too, but we'd expect the Wii to have surpassed the Xbox 360's total.

According to the Reuters newsagency, Nintendo had shipped 13.2m Wiis worldwide by the end of September 2007, just under the 13.4m Xbox 360s sold to date at that point.

To beat the 360, Nintendo will have had to have sold more than 4.5m Wiis. Unfortunately, US sales data for December 2007 isn't yet in, although according to market watcher NPD, Nintendo shipped 1.5m Wiis in the US in October and November.

US Console Sales

Source: NPD

Japanese Wii sales for those two months come to 1.34m units, according to publisher Enterbrain, and based on local market monitor Media Create's weekly December sales figures, you can add at least 0.6m to that figure, making 1.94m, rising to 3.44m when you add the US numbers.

Japan Console Sales

Source: Enterbrain

Factor in European estimates and the number of consoles Nintendo is seems likely to have shipped in December, and the videogames pioneer should well have shipped more than 4.5m Wiis in the last three months of 2007.

Not bad for a machine that has a much lower spec than the 360 and PS3, and has been on sale for a shorter period. Only the infamous Wii famine might keep the 360 on top.

But to finish with the 360, Halo 3 went on sale late September 2007. Some 8.1m copies were sold up to the end of the year, Microsoft said. So it's not hard to see how the company sold 24.3 per cent of all the Xbox 360s it has ever sold in the same period as this much-anticipated title was on sale. 

Not sure what site(s) you are complaining about. From your article they think the wii outsold the 360:

That's true of the Nintendo Wii too (machine only went on sale a year after the Xbox 360 did), but (unlike the PS3) we'd expect the Wii to have surpassed the Xbox 360's total.

The title says "Nintendo Wii set to beat MS' 17.7m all-time Xbox 360 sales tally". It can't be set to beat it if it's already done so.

Their logic already fails if they use a shipped number from MS

Ah, who cares anyway.

It's set to beat the 360 because unlike MS Nintendo hasn't told us the shipped figure for the Wii so they don't have up to date figures on the Wii but it is set to beat the 360 when they are known.

Just because they believe that the Wii is extremely likely to have shipped more than the 360in the last quarter doesn't neabt they can say it has, it would be bad journalism, so they just say it is set to do it.

 They never said it didn't already do so.  Only that it's set to once they have official numbers...  but they don't have official numbers, so they will not claim it yet.

I think some site bias may be at work as well as many UK tech-sites are anti-Wii (including Reg_Hardware).

Also, interesting that they are still using WW shipped reports from September as the basis for the best-selling console.

Finally, the "poised to beat" is a discussion about the fourth quarter of the calendar year as much as anything -- the headline is misleading.

Mike from Morgantown

Here's another one suggesting the Wii's only just overtaken the 360... maybe. And it attacks VGChartz in the last paragraph. It is Spong though:

http://spong.com/article/14532/Wii_Ahead_Of_Xbox_360_In_Hardware_Sales_?cb=164

While Microsoft is the company that's just been touting global console sales figures, it may well be Nintendo's Wii that has the largest installed base for a new generation console.

17.7 million Xbox 360s have been sold worldwide since launch, according to Microsoft. Using the figures currently available and a bit of educated guesswork, it's not unreasonable to suggest that the Wii has topped that figure - despite having been on sale for a year less than the 360.

According to Reuters news agency, by the end of September last year the 360 had sold 13.4 million units. The Wii, meanwhile, was a smidgeon behind with 13.2 million units sold. That means that to have exceeded the 360's sales, more than 4.5 million Wiis needed to have been sold since then, while 4.3 million 360s have been sold in that period.

There's no sales data from NPD for the US in December yet, but we know that 1.5 million Wiis were sold over the October/November period.

In Japan, meanwhile, 1.34 million Wiis were sold in those two months according to Enterbrain. Add in weekly sales figures from Media Create and you've got at least another 0.6 million consoles sold.

That brings the known total up to 3.44 million units sold since the end of September. To trump the 360's total, then, Nintendo needs to have sold 1.06 million Wiis spread between PAL territories since the end of September and America in December only.

While there have been notorious shortages of the Wii in certain areas, it seems like a good bet that Nintendo will have accomplished that.

For the record, VG Chartz puts the Wii's global sales figure at 19.5 million. The fact that it has the 360's total at the end of 2007 at just over 16 million, however, shows that VG Chartz figures need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Unless, of course, the 360 has sold 1.7 million units in the last three and a half days.

Many people think that this website overtracks the Wii, because ioi is for some reason thought to be a nintendo fanboy (despite owning a 360, wii, gamecube and PS2), maybe because leo-j claimed that ioi has insulted the the PS3.
Who knows, I guess we will just have to wait to hear nintendo's figures