How, pray tell, do posts on a forum translate into any amount of sales data?  That has got to be the stupidist logic I've ever heard someone utter in my entire life, and I'm old.

It's like judging how many deer have been killed during hunting season, by how many protesters there are protesting animal violence.  There's no relevance to the data. 

Unless you have the hard data, unless you're paying for the hard data, then any form of extrapolation based on the analysis of data, especially when looking at past performance, will be flawed.  That's just a fact.  Not something you get your panties in a twist about. 

Why did every analyst get December 2011 wrong?  Because it's analysis.  If you have tunnel vision when you analyze data, if your methodolgy involves past performance, and you fail to factor in additional information, you're gonna have bad resulting data.  Everyone looked at December 2010 and November 2011 and said, December 2012 is gonna be an awesome month.  What was missed was one subtle, unassuming clue from early December, sales of consumers electronics following Black Friday nosed dived.  Analysis is as only as good as the data.  Miss a key piece of data and your analysis is off.  Analysts missed a critical piece of data in December.

Clearly, if you haven't figured it out by now, VGC data set is imperfect.  So what?  Who cares?  Unless you're basing your investment decisions on this data, and as a result, have chosen wrongly, then why does it matter that VGC's data isn't 100% accurate?  How much have you paid for the opportunity to get factual data and not speculative data?  How much?  Right, no one red cent/pence/euro.  

If you haven't figured out by now, you're pissing into the wind, my friend and no good comes of that.  You want to bitch about free data being imperfect and imprecise, then go to NPD and bitch to them.  They'll offer you more precise data, but it'll cost you.  In the mean time, accept that VGC's tracking data is ONLY a guide and NOT fact, then maybe life will be a little less frustrating for you. 

What are you trying to say? I merely state that 360 is more and bigger overtracked then PS3, are you challenging this fact? Ive never seen the PS3 being overtracked with over a million for 1 month. Ofcourse adjustments are made, thats how the numbers stay in line. For the most part from october to december numbers are way off from official sources like NPD.

Neogaf jvm:

3DS = 125K
NDS = 80K
PSV = 75K
PSP = 15K

Prototype 2- 190k (5 days)

Ironically, "The Gap" (Ps3-X360) everbody seems to be hooked on here was correct for most of the time (appox 2.9mio end of year). Then early this year, wild corrections started to appear and "The Gap" erratically jumped up and down. Had the site owner not done any adjustments at all, "The Gap" would be reasonably correct now (judging from shipping data)...

lol cant believe DS > Vita.

So whats your problem when I point out a simple fact? I didnt even start about adjustments, just how 360 is overtracked more often.

PS3 was overtracked? Probably in 2007 or so when it was in its launch years. Ive been lurking the site since 2009 and never have I seen PS3 being overtracked by a million and the rest undertracked. Ive been seeing this for 2 holidays seasons now that 360 is greatly overtracked during those times.

Is it a coincidence that over the years of being on this website the people who reply to me trying to deny the above fact are the ones who have Halo or other MS based avatars/signatures or have a history of posting pro MS stuff? And i'm the one who has an 'agenda'?

Just because something is hard done by, doesn't mean that it has to be deliberate. I have stated many times before that this site is not being deliberately biased against the ps3, it's just a fact that the majority of the time it gets undertracked compared to the 360 and adjustments have to be made.

Well, if you look at the numbers right now, the console that seems to need a downwards adjustment in it's numbers is the PS3, and more than half a million. The truth is if IoI adjusts the site numbers each quarter, after the financial reports, everything is mostly OK. The biggest problem is where are those consoles sold, not the absolute numbers, as with two consecutive shipping numbers we have a good view of the market behaviour.

The problem is with a group of posters who post almost nothing but pro MS stuff trying to spin the numbers all the time with no basis in reality to try and make it seem as if the 360 is the console that is hard done by and not the ps3. When the 360 is overtracked (like this past christmas) they fought tooth and nail saying the 360's high numbers must be right, when the financial reports came out they continuously denied the 360 had clearly been overshipped and channel stuffed, when all the independent trackers released there numbers to back this up they continued to post the opposite of what was reality & don't even get me started on the deluded posters who couldn't take the fact that the ps3 outsold the 360 in 2011, those post of denial were almost endless. And now the ps3 might be overtracked the same pro 360 posters are out in force again trying to get the ps3 numbers lowered. In the real world this forum has more pro MS posters trying to spin the numbers than Sony posters but the MS posters are in denial about this and believe it's actually the other way round.

So far all the data from tracking firms we have match vgchartz numbers for the ps3, when some actual proper data comes out that shows the ps3 is overtracked then by all means the numbers should be changed, i've already stated my personal opinion that some where in the world the ps3 is probably overtracked by a couple of hundred thousand and that's about it.