Because the last two major press releases about sold through numbers were reporting shipped numbers. That's where my doubt comes from.

No, that was sold through...to consumers. They shipped like 6m I believe and have now shipped 8m.

Which trackers?

No, the WD number was sold to consumers. It included digital though obviously.

Hell, even VGC have it now at 4m+ first week all platforms combined.

All of the trackers that reported data, aka. NPD and Chart Track. NPD reported 1.25 million sold across all platforms. The European numbers were pieced together from debuts and numbers for each of the major European countries.

I appreciate the link. Sad that it's just internal estimations.

All speculation but they shipped 3.2 million PS3/4's(sonys financial) up until June 30(what the split is no one knows but wa can favor it skews heavily in favor of PS4). Given how businesses like to work  that likely includes a shipment(ready to go may not have actually left the factory) very close to that June 30 number. I doubt that they sold the shipment that was in transit(should take roughly a month to get to retailers, from personal retail experience 1-2 months on hot items) shipped enough more(another month for that shipment) and sold that as well.  They can get away with lying about that number because nearly no one has access to those numbers and they will be well beyond that number as of the next quarter. Sounds great, rallys the troops and they easly pass that number by the end of the month+ smash that out of the park with the white bundle.

No other company announces it this way because there is too much involved to see how many have been sold. Traditionally companies look to companies like the NPD to tout their sold numbers. If it were easy to get sold to customer numbers investors would know because investors dont like channel stuffing. In the end Sony's main customers are retailers and not individuals.

VGC has watch_dogs at 3.36 million all platforms combined.

It's the most accurate estimations you'll ever get. You know that NPD is estimations right? It's based on known sales numbers, just like it says in the link. Sales data collected 8/10/2014. Does that mean anything to you?

3,401,733m to be exact, but yeah, not quite 4mill.

It sold 400k first week on PC, so add the ~300k digital sales of that version and we get a lot closer to the 4 million number. Can digital sales of the other 4 version plus possible tracking errors on vgchartz' side make up for the last 300k? I very much believe so.