While I don't agree with telling ioi to "Grow up", this actually seems to be the case. Especially on places like Wikipedia (even though its known for spewing mis-information so I'm not sure why they would care about being slightly off on console sales..). It seems almost like no one will take VGchartz as a credible source. I personally think the site is pretty reliable, but you may have to wait a couple months to get solid numbers for the month you are referencing, i.e. there might still be adjustments for December in Feb.

 No, no it really isn't.  Not if you know anything about statistics or the difference between survey statsitics and projection statstics. 

Sorry my portuguese friend, but you are wrong. The PS3 isn't undertracked, it was overtracked.

¿And the source is?

Eh, what the heck. I'll explain the difference for you.

For example, say there are 100 stores in france... and i have 2 stores. (Smaller numbers for benefit of ease, feel free to add zeros if you'd like.)

If I was completeling a survey i'd survey those 2 stores and say they sold 3 Wiis, 2 PS3s and 1 Xbox.

I'd assume that my survey was accurate and other people would take it to mean that there were 150 wii's sold, 100 PS3's and 50 Xbox 360s.

While projection statistics work like this.

I'd survey at first, find the exact same numbers as the survey above, but when I got other more reliable numbers like from chart track, or sold to retail numbers from the big three. I'd find that infact the Wii sold 300, the PS3 sold 100 and the 360 sold 100.

After a few weeks i can be sure that these stats keep going. These same stores seem to account for less coverage of the Wii and 360 then the PS3 by about double.

Therefore when I got the data i would multiply the Wii and 360 by two. (Not this is EXTREMELY simplfied as the actual projection formula you would run it through usually ends up way more complicated as different stores have different coverage and cover different bases and the like.)

Projection statistics get better each with as the formula changes. While surveys just except a direct 1 to 1 and unless the confidence interval is close (i think that's what it's called.) there is a good chance they can be way off.

As such, a lot of the time your formula is way more important than the number of stores you have coverage for. Also the kinds of stores. For examle, 1 Wal-mart store in the US would be way more valuable then say, 20 stores of a small chain of 20 all stationed in NY.  That 1,000 callers likely all came from the same area of France for example.

The problem with payed sources is that often times they will keep an inferior formula on the off chance the way they change their complicated formula would cause giant errors... sometimes to offset this they'll have two or three groups of stats guys using different formulas on the same data to see if the new formulas will be more effective.

hes spanish =P

at some times i would love to have some ignore user button. It would make things alot easier 

Poor Ioi. He's Harassed when the numbers are a few minutes later than usual. Then shouted at when he rushes to put out the numbers and makes some errors due to data anomalies. We recognise the hard work that Ioi puts into the site as well as keeping a full time job.
Maybe move all updates a day later to allow for all the data to come in and be tinkered with properly?

Maybe the people who are complaining can join other tracking websites. A rival website currently has the PS3 & Wii 1.5million & 2.6million lower than VGChartz.

I just want to say, ioi, I love everything you do for this site, and all your hard work. Once I stumbled upon this place, I kind of just roamed the forums for a while, until I finally started to sign up. It's great having a number of different views, plenty of different topics of discussion, and just a wealth of knowledge and information from the majority of members, who appears to be some of the smartest on video game forums, compared to the others I have been.

There are always fanboys everywhere you go, same here, but at least for the most part (excluding jhlennon, who has always goes against the grain, often times without any hard evidence or facts, mainly just pro-sony babble, but i digress) they all dish out their arguments in good fashion, and are up for some good, quality discussion, using more than just their extreme bias as their arguments.

This place is truly a joy to come to everyday, and I am glad almost everyone here acts mature about 99% of the time, open to new ideas, and constructive criticism, instead of blind faith, and total disregard for the facts/truth. That's all I got...and shot out to mummelman!!!

WEWdeadeye,

well said, I second that. Although I'm a bit immature and mostly a fanboy myself, I love how serious the forums and the discussions are here.

And hail to ioi for all the sales figures of course.

I don't know how ioi can stand it. I would have kicked countless asses in this thread by now.

Though I still wonder how diomedes gets ban immunity considering that he does more trolling beyond whining about the numbers. On a daily basis.