I just came here again to see how SONY fans play down the success of XBOX360. Why don't you guys focus on how many market share "PLAYSTATION" brand already lost in the past few years.

I remember in this site, some pepole claimed PS3 will outsold XBOX360 WW in 2010, and then change to 2011. Now change to 2012.

We will see~~~

Because the overall numbers used to back up that claim most likely include every Kinect unit, bundled or not as individual hardware units.

Considering that they have gone on record as claiming Kinect is a new platform (which it is to many consumers new to the Xbox brand who specifically bought it for Kinect), that's where they get "world hardware leader for 2011." 

Technically, that is not a false claim. 

A lot of retailers keep all Kinect titles in a separate section of the overall Xbox game selection. Identifying them as Kinect titles with the purple cases is again emphasizing that MS wants public perception of Kinect to be that of a new platform. 

Does it count for the purpose of console tracking numbers like the ones on this site? That should be pretty obvious. For a hypothetical 20 m consoles sold plus 10 m Kinect units, compared to a hypothetical 25 m consoles sold by a competitor, they "won" under the 20+10 count and "lost" in the 20 vs 25 count. 

That's still pretty open to debate.

While it's probably a safe claim to say that there are more inactive/dead 360s out of circulation than PS3s, simply due to the ridiculous fail rates of the early Xenon/Zephyr 360s, there is a significant number of inactive/dead PS3s, particularly among the original 60GB/20GB SKUs. Even the cheaper $400 40GB replacement SKUs prior to the hardware redesign had a not insignificant rate of failure.

Trade-ins really can't be counted towards anything unless they're sitting in a GS stock room or warehouse, unsold and unused for all eternity or turned into low cost building materials/bricked console fortresses.

Upgrades and special editions take place for any console; most of the special edition consoles are likely purchased as a second console rather than a replacement. 

If we talk about world wide hardware leader, it must be SONY. They have PS3, PS2, PSP, PSV, PSPGO, Laptop, tablets, camera, TV , E-booker and so on.

We will know in a couple of hours, so until then just keep up the wishful thinking.

Technically all we ever know for sure are shipments plus the companies own estimates of "sold".  The true sold to consumer is probably not known to anyone - all it takes is one small retailer in some emerging market not feeding back sales to force an estimate into everyone's understanding - but I guess between shipments and releases we should be able to have a fair view of sold to consumers.

Like the install base the sold number is fluid and always changing although the numbers are big enough any errors are hopefully small by comparison.

Whatever they announce makes zero difference. If they announce lower then the 66m they will get laughed at and the whole "Sony winz" thing will kick into over-drive.
If they announce the 66m or higher people won't believe it and come up with ways to justify the numbers i.e overshipping by 3m. Whatever they do they won't be able to win.
The same people who do the whole "wait for shipments" will then just say something else.

Pretty sure the "Sony dudes" normally say "wait for the shipping numbers". Indicating that the only real way to tell is from them. Which I agree with. Those are official numbers. If we are way over/under here on shipments they clearly there is something wrong with the numbers on vgc.

But regardless of what happens people won't accept the numbers for MS. If it is higher then it is channel stuffed or whatever.

The complete opposite will happen when the Sony numbers come out, go back and check the last quarters thread. If it is less then we get "i am happy with the numbers as they are" or if it is more then we have "massively under-tracked, this website sucks" etc etc. Sure even you must remember the fallout from recent Sony shipment number days?!

Thankfully most sane people as I mentioned above go on shipping numbers. Those numbers indicate demand. But you watch whatever happens the shit will hit the fan :)

to Pezus:

Yes, like you, fanboy is always a fanboy.

*Moderated by Tor

shipment is the direct sales of the console manufacturers. If microsoft shipped more consoles (xbox360) than sony (ps3), what is the problem for them to claim the victory of 2011?

Maybe you guys here in this website are only focus on retail sales, but for the manufacturers, shipment figure (their projection sales) is way more important. Just realize it.