Well put.  I actually should have added in the OP about the misjudgement of consumer demand.  In fact, I'll add it now.

So much wishful thinking.

I think a good explanation would be that not only did retailers expect to sell more units in December than in November (and rightly so, history was on their side), but they probably also wanted to take advantage of some discounts that MS may have been offering in exchange for BF deals.

All those BF deals may have happened because MS, while not lowering the official RRP, where giving discounts to retailers for large orders in exchange for said retailers offering vouchers to consumers. If this were true then retailers may have rushed to get as many 360's as possible for discounted rates.

Haven't commented at all on any numbers from NPD but I just feel the need to comment on these MS numbers that everyone is getting all up in arms about.

I know people don't want to believe Microsoft would stuff the channel (Overship, Retail Overorder, etc... who gives a damn what it is called, it is what it is), but we need to be realistic here and realize who we are talking about. These are the same exact people who only a few years ago claimed "First to 10M in the US wins the generation", then after that holiday season it was found that they only hit 10M before the Wii did because the channel was stuffed. So yeah, the next shipment was small but they still got to claim their "win".

Look, I know some don't want to believe it, but history shows they have done it before, even though of course we won't know the full extent of it for another few months, but seriously people, don't get all bent out of shape that some believe over shipping to be the culprit. This scenario is easily more of a possibility than VGChartz not realizing a 360 sales explosion in Europe that surpassed that of the two rival consoles, a sales explosion that would have had to come from absolute thin air when you go by the numbers we already got this year from Nintendo. Plus Nintendo will clear up this claim not too long from now and if their numbers show no massive under tracking, well... you know what gains even more credibility then.

So let people believe what they want because if you don't and you keep the bickering up, it could get real ugly in a few months. So just argue your side and let them argue theirs.

Okay we know MS sold more than 66 million units and people here just don't accpet to believe this number and say they were stuffing the channels.
This is a serious question: How can you actually "stuff the channels?" Do you force retailer to buy 360s, even though they don't think to sell them?

Thanks

On Christmas eve i went to the bestbuy in Hickory NC and they literally had Hundreds of xbox360's on the floor for sell. So that makes me think that microsoft ment shipped units. If most bestbuys had this many xboxs in stock then I could believe that there would be easily over a million or more xboxs in store shelves right now.

Euphoria14 said: Haven't commented at all on any numbers from NPD but I just feel the need to comment on these MS numbers that everyone is getting all up in arms about. I know people don't want to believe Microsoft would stuff the channel (Overship, Retail Overorder, etc... who gives a damn what it is called, it is what it is), but we need to be realistic here and realize who we are talking about. These are the same exact people who only a few years ago claimed "First to 10M in the US wins the generation", then after that holiday season it was found that they only hit 10M before the Wii did because the channel was stuffed. So yeah, the next shipment was small but they still got to claim their "win". Look, I know some don't want to believe it, but history shows they have done it before, even though of course we won't know the full extent of it for another few months, but seriously people, don't get all bent out of shape that some believe over shipping to be the culprit. This scenario is easily more of a possibility than VGChartz not realizing a 360 sales explosion in Europe that surpassed that of the two rival consoles, a sales explosion that would have had to come from absolute thin air when you go by the numbers we already got this year from Nintendo. Plus Nintendo will clear up this claim not too long from now and if their numbers show no massive under tracking, well... you know what gains even more credibility then. So let people believe what they want because if you don't and you keep the bickering up, it could get real ugly in a few months. So just argue your side and let them argue theirs.

It's kinda interesting how quick it was to look to EU to be the savor of MS's claim, even though history has never shown EU, as a whole, to be a strong region for the 360.  The PS3 launched 15 months after the 360 (Dec '06 for 360, Mar '07 for PS3) and by the end of '09 it had already passed the 360 by over 750K units (360 had ~2.7 million on PS3 at launch).  And it's been pretty steadingly widening the gap ever since then.  I believe someone thought it may have been undertracked by ~800K there.  With France's numbers just out, the 360 was overtracked there by ~100K.  So that means that outside of US/UK (360's best regions), Japan and France the 360 would have seen sales of ~900K above what VGC was already reporting.  We would have heard months before the numbers came out if something that incredible was happening.

ok, let just say MS did sell 66 million units. Now where is the difference, where is the 360 undertracked? 

It's really easy to guess what happened here. Almost 99% of people expected the 360 to sell over 2.5 million units in the US, no one would have guessed they would selll less than last year, so retailers odered enough to at least have enough for 2.5 million. But, for a console we thought was in huge demand, there was no claim of sellout, it was always available, that's not normal. Retailers miscalculated and MS sent them what they ordered. NPD just put everything into reality. 

So won't Ballmer sing and dance and shout mantras and slogans? I feel utterly disappointed!   

Anyway, whether Ballmer is right or not, it's better for Ninty and Sony to not reveal their statements before when they planned to do it, it could be interpreted as defensive.

We should change our vocabulary. Overshipping a product would be to ship more then what was ordered. MS obviously did not do that. Its not their fault if the retailers thought there would be an even higher demand.