This really.

If shipped means sold in the business world, then congrats to Microsoft, they now have bragging rights. I'm guessing Microsoft already knew roughly how much they were going to ship for the rest of the year at E3, so they weren't worried about being wrong unless SONY changed their sales forecasts and introduced a huge price cut.

Does it really matter either way? They set a lofty sales goal, and that's about it.

I have to question the priorities of people who argue over whether their prediction was a "lie" or not.

Nope, most shipped, not most sold.

I didn't even realise there was an argument over whether MS meant shipped or sold through. I always assumed MS meant shipped, because that's pretty much all the big 3 ever report on. Only time they ever release PR statements in relation to sell through is NPD numbers, and that ain't "globally".

I guess if there really were claims here that MS was talking sell through then this thread may have something to add that the innumerable previous thread did not. Otherwise it's a redundant thread, and not the first one. This horse has been well and truly flogged, let it die already.

@zhao3gold: Obviously Sony would care about who won sold through, especially if it is them. It'd be the only piece of remotely good news to come out of 2011 for them, and may be the only piece of good news for them for a while yet, depending on how Vita's launch in the west goes. So yeah, I think Sony would love to be able to claim that more people bought a PS3 in 2011 than peole who bought Wii or 360. Of course Sony can't publicly make that claim because the difference between PS3 and 360 on this site is within margin of error, and AFAIK none of the big 3 ever refer to this site's figures for their PR purposes (funny that VGC has been used as a reference for Guiness world records though), and there's no source of global retail sales information that has greater credibility to which Sony can refer.

Between January 2011 and December 2011, did the PS3/360 sales gap grow or shrink?

Well, sold to consumer it went 550k~ in PS3's favour, in shipments it went 800k in 360's favour.

So why did Microsoft ship so much? Was it to compensate for low stock at the end of 2010 and they ended up with extra stock at the end of 2011?

That amongst many other possible scenarios, over estimating demand for the US in Q4 the most likely.