I would imagine because they dont ship or have access to other companies or third party software. You think NPD has tier accounts so sony can just get info on software on their system and theyre unique data? They pay to access the overall market.

My take away is that Sony knows how often retailers are replenishing stock, they also have unique access to shipping figures for many tier 2/3 countries in the dreaded "others" category. To think that sony somehow has less of an idea about their shipment and sell thru than a place like VGC is absurd.

They subscribe to trackers for access to market information. They can also propbably access unique PSN accounts as well as unique connected PS4 systems on the network to account for multiple systems tied to a single account. 

People need to understand this website is a good general snapshot that is hit or miss and more often hit than miss but when Sony releases figures even if they are estimates it most assuredly trumps this website. ioi is handling it correctly because the market is not static and if new trends emerge, using the same formulas, as he stated, like ps2/ps3 trends wont work long term. It would surely help for there to be a clear disclaimer but then he risks credibility. The site just needs to evolve and be flexible the same way consumer habits change and adapt. That is the only thing lacking.

Or you can look at the much simpler answer and that is VGC understracked every week before that. Using incomplete data and bad math/record keeping and came up 600k short..

of course that is the more logical explanation... I was pointing out that a day would make very little difference in the discrepency in the numbers

As much as I love the idea of Kaz calling up every store in the world that sells Playstation products and asking them how many copies of Killzone they sold today, I just don't see it happening.

Apologies if sarcasm, I'm tired!

I think I mentioned this before, but retailers don't want to be giving out sales data to anyone (especially the manufacturer). If a system is selling quickly why would a retailer want to put themselves in a weak position when dealing with the manufacturer? Also that information is valuable, they're not going to just hand it over to Sony for free.

And bending the truth isn't going to fly in this scenario. Sales numbers are not subjective, if its proven that Sony is lying, it will kill a lot of their positive image. And that is frankly iditotic. Why would they jeapordize their position on a statement they didn't need to make and then clarify it as sale through to assuage any doubt.

So it doesn't matter whether or not "Sony themselves have no way of possibly knowing sold through figures", as a billion dollar company we can be sure that there methods of actually tracking the sales of their own product are accurate enough that they can make such a statement with certainty.

They wouldn't blow their PR on a sales announcement when they were already 3million above the nearest competitor. Please...

He doesn't need to call them. Have you ever worked as manager in retail?: ever known anyone that has? Sony, or the devs or who ever constantly need to to restock or reevalute the current stock in stores. Every week A manager will send Sony a bunch of infomration asking for more stock or returning old stock if its really not selling. they also send a detailed report of every Sony product sale to sony. It tells them how many of what sold and when. It works the same with pretty much every product and in most places it's become pretty much automated.  

Marketing grad/professional here. Just wanna correct your perception on a few things:

Yes it's true that companies would bend the truth in order to make their products look better than they actually are. They do this by using misleading terms that seem to mean one thing but really mean another like "no one does X better" or ambiguous terms like "the market's leading X product". They use spin, ambiguity and terminologies open to multiple interpretations to their advantage. 

What companies DO NOT DO is to be misleading in ANY instance where the said information is clear and quantifiable. What they DO NOT DO is to be specific about things like sales being OVER a specific milestine (they would rather use terms like, "estimated at" or "nearly" or "within the area of") and what they WOULD NOT DO is be very damn specific about the details surrounding it. Not unless they are stupid or desperate. This is because during these instances, companies HATE to get embarassed if it turns out they are wrong (not to mention the damage to their credibility). And being that they were very specific on the metric used, it is a bery simple matter to prove them wrong.

So no, I disagree about them being misleading about the very specific sales figures they announced (risking the loss of the goodwill they've managed to buid).

Oh my, I can't believe you're serious. This doesn't happen often and they would get quarterly/yearly data at best. People who are dedicated at this are unable to get this information and they pay specifically for it.

Manufacturers have a little push in that they negotiate for more stock to be purchased, but that happens in every industry. Some people leverage relationships and other products to get more of one on store shelves.

I know that Sony has to pay for general market data. They're interested in their performance, the competition is just goalposts. Shipment data is super useful and I wish PS4 wasn't pushed with PS3. And bolded, no one is saying this.

and underlined, no one is saying otherwise.