Hmm, just got back from a break to find this thread. We haven't been actively (i.e on a weekly basis) tracking PS2 sales since things switched earlier this year so yes, the PS2 numbers are now outdated and a few million below where they should be. William has clearly jumped the gun and posted the article without checking first.

A general note on data - we basically have two systems, one that tracks weekly sales and one that tracks totals - this is the easiest way to provide totals data for games and hardware that we don't have weekly tracking for (older stuff generally). This should explain why data updates in some cases and not in others. Weekly PS2 sales in the USA and western Europe are less than 10k per week and running that through our normal extrapolation process obviously produces global data that is far too small since 90% of sales are in developing markets such as the Middle East, Latin America, India, China etc for PS2 - all of which we don't get any direct data for. For most other platforms, these markets only represent a few percent of sales so a simple extrapolation of data in known regions is good enough to get to the right ballpark.

Therefore, it is meaningless trying to produce weekly data for PS2 based just on what we collect for the USA / Europe / Japan which is why we stopped and all we can do now is periodically update the totals based on shipments and external reports from those developing regions, something I haven't done since last year. Typically year-end is when a lot of adjustments happen as most regions publish end of year data and we can compare our estimates and extrapolations and fix where we have under / over scaled so we will correct the PS2 figures early in Jan when this is done. Same with the Vita "issues" that seem to be of such unnecessarily high importance to some of the posters here.

Hope this makes sense, let me know if you have any more questions.

I'm not sure I follow - using buying trends in known regions to estimate for unknown when each region is so different and the known regions represent such a small sample will be meaningless in terms of accuracy?

To be honest, I have no idea where 1m PS2s are being sold each quarter when all the data from all the regions we collect only adds up to < 150k. Trying to use LTD data in any way to predict current trends is totally useless since the worldwide breakdown is totally different now to 3-4 years ago, nevermind to 7-8 years ago. In Western markets, there haven't really been any PS2 shipments in the last 12-18 months but there are clearly large amounts going to India, Middle East etc as well as a lot of games being sold that we are also not tracking. This is similar with other Sony products which have a lot more traction in these markets than Nintendo / MS - it is more a case of we have no idea how many are being sold in those small but increasingly significant markets rather than some kind of intentional Sony bias as is often suggested

The best we could do would be to say that in the last quarter it sold 90k per week so we could just put it at 90k per week for this quarter but that's just complete guesswork and meaningless so the best we can do is work back from shipments (but then that assumes that shipment data is perfect which is usually isn't).

It is less a case of ignorance, more a case of necessity. Creating a suite of tools just for you won't pay the bills I'm afraid (unless you are prepared to fund the process or lend your time to it)...

We could update the PS2 figures on a quarterly / monthly or even weekly basis but it would just be doing what nexgenwars did when it was around which was to keep incrementing a number based on a recent trend which is dangerous ground to be on. PS2 Sales may suddenly plummet in developing regions if PS3 gets cheap enough and we could end up a million higher than reality.

In all honesty, I doubt many people (beyond 5-10 of you here) really care about PS2 sales enough to warrant updating it any more than once or twice a year as we get fresh data. If William hasn't made this mistake with the article we wouldn't even be having this conversation...

I would say that PS2 shipments/sales could be roughly figured out using the PS3 numbers here. Could only be done every 3 Months though with the shipment reports.

If we know our PS3 numbers are accurate with the mix of shipment data, NPD and Nintendo charts... And we know how much PS3s are usually on shelves/ships... We should be able to get rough PS2 shipment numbers.

Imagine this - Sony announce 4 Million PS3/PS2 shipments for a Quarter. We know that the PS3 had sold 2.5 Million and can estimate say, 800k in supply. That would leave us with 700k PS2s shipped for the Quarter. Depending on the Quarter, it should be easy to figure out demand by looking at past trends. 500k sold with 200k on shelves? 550-150? 450-250? While its not exactly accurate, I think it would be much better than leaving numbers for over a Year then reporting them as numbers from right now.

Only just seen this, sorry. I cant link you to the official release on my phone, but I can link you to a thread on Sonys report.

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=145942&page=1

Read this post - http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4705616

"This decrease was primarily due to lower sales of hardware and software of the PSP® (PlayStation Portable) and PlayStation®3"

The previous Year, PS3 shipped 1.8 Million in the same Quarter. Thus we know that PS3 was lower than 1.8 Million in the combined 2.8 for PS3 and PS2.

Still obscure. First of all they are using revenue to measure this number. They say HW and SW to PSP and PS3. SW never sold well enough on the PSP to mak a dent so I assume that is target towards the Ps3. Ontop of that the PSP has shown massive HW drops while only shipping 900k in Sony's Jan-March numbers so I doubt they got anywhere near those 1.8 million shipped from last years April - June quarter so I'd think the HW numbers more targetted to the PSP. Shipped trends show the Ps3 pretty even. Wouldnt make sense for the Ps3 to sharply decline  while the Ps2 sharply increases. Include the fact that Sony shipped 70 million ps3's in Oct that would mean they woud had to of shipped damn near 2 million in that single month

Theyre saying hardware and software are down for PSP and PS3. I think thats pretty clear and it matches what we know about PS3 being down YoY on VGC, NPD, NintyCharts and MC/Famitsu.

1.7 Million isnt down sharply from 1.8 Million. While PS2 would be down YoY for the Quarter by 300k if it had sold 1.1 Million.

EDIT - And PS3 @ 70M shipped was announced in November. Which is 3 Months after the August Quarterly report.