they said it in their NPD PR

They were talking WW in NPD PR? I'm thinking it was a misprint. #1 in USA/Nth America for 2011 is what they meant.

I suppose if they mean shipped then perhaps they will be. After all manufacturer's mostly talk in terms of shipped, and perhaps MS are wanting retailers to forward order lots of 360s in preparation for the Q1 2012 price cut. Which could mean MS ships way more 360's this Q than Ninty or Sony ship their respective consoles. 360 is only about 700K behind PS3 in shipments this year so far (as of end of Q3), and likelihood is that Q4 retails sales will be quite close. So MS doesn't have to ship all that many more 360's this Q in preparation for a Q1 price drop to edge PS3 in 2011 shipments. MS knows what Sony's shipments target is for FY 2011/12: 15 million, so it's pretty easy for them to plan their shipments to ensure 2011 is a shipments "win" for MS.

It's simply way to ballsy for MS to make a bold claim of being #1 in retail sales WW at this stage of the year for me to believe that's really what they mean.

The chinese manufacturers will ship exactly the number of boxes to MS as they were ordered to ship MONTHS ago according to the current fj plan. There is no company in the world that changes orders just because some other company might ship some other numbers in some quarter.

I can assure you that somewhere inside MS and Sony and Nintendo, there are people shitting bricks at this time as they will be unable to secure enough harddisks for the coming summer/fall quarters. So nobody wastes a single thought on old shipment numbers that were written in stone Months ago.

Nope they said Worldwide

"With a robust holiday portfolio that has something for everyone, we are expecting another blockbuster holiday and finishing the year as the number one console worldwide."

gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=136565&page=8

Unless they pull something drastic sell through sales number 1 position will never be theirs. So I agree it's most probably gonna end up being PR BS from them. I wouldn't be surprised if they either overestimated themselves or underestimated Sony earlier when they mentioned it (several times already)

I have a question in the link in the op it part of it says "with the release of gears 3 we should maintain our lead for the rest of the year and finish number one world wide".
Up until "world wide" the whole article looks like he's referring to NA , could this be a deliberate mistake a sort of if it happens great we told you , and if it doesn't he can say he was talking NDP and worlwide was an accident .

I mentioned this in another thread but the only logical reasoning I can think of for MS making that claim would be if they thought that Sony would fall significantly short of their fiscal year target.

Except they have said it in response to every NPD report since June, so there is no way they could just brush it off as a simple mistake.  Though, in the end, it won't matter to most gaming journalists.  But, it will still make for some fun discussion in the forums. 

Wow this thread will net me 1000 replies!!

I love the absoloute denial of possiblity from some of you though, v good

It looks like MS isn't even going to need to cut the price to do this, well not in America anyway. I'd still advise a cut in EMEAA.

But then I know stuff you guys don't so I shouldn't be mean

Where is that Dodace character? We never established our bet.

Seece decides to post again when the 360's about to explode.

Oh Seece.