Ioi, I agree with you in all the bullets (we users don't have access to all individual areas, altough the ones we have are undertracked, maybe the others that are small are a little overtacked and in the end the net result is what you put).

About the blindly adjust I agree with you it is no good, and I'm happy with you taking your time (I would at most put it separate to have the total 10M, but that isn't really that much important in the end), it's preferable that you take 2 months to get everything in line and have a smaller error forward than just keep changing the factor everytime a fluctuation appears.

I hope Sony can give you enough details to refine your methodology in "Others" that would be really invaluable to the site. I think the work here is great. And maybe they really sold 1M in "others" and that was something no one was expecting, but no one was expecting the success of the launch as well.

Keep up strong. My only question was that if you consider you to be closer with 440k in others or Sony with 1M, not that you correct randomly.

What ethics card? I never said VGC was more trustworthy. They have a very limited data pool and saying that their numbers are better than regional trackers would be ludicrous. All singular statements by any company are inherently untrustworthy.

Not saying that VGC can't be biased and be posting numbers for the highest bidder but I would doubt that any respected manufacturer would give a fuck about slightly better or worse numbers on a single site on the internet when it is clear that there are a lot more sources that are trusted a lot more than VGC including their own statements.

With companies we can be sure that they're biased towards themselves. If they're not then they're not very good at running a company. I made a thread once about where people thought Sony is getting their numbers. I didn't really receive a concensus because nobody knows about their internal workings. Nobody can verify but the numbers are still widely reported and believed. It seems weird that people are gobbling it up but are starting to get skeptikal at other points. It's a profit oriented company. I could tell you a hundred lies about my company that seem believable and you'd had no way of determining if what I said is true.

Let's do a little number game here.

Sony did their calculations and their first result is about 9.8 million. 10m is very much within the margin of error here so they look at their formular again, seeing if they forgot something, and maybe tweak it a bit. They come up with 10 million in the end. Sounds reasonable and a good number to announce. They believe in that number.

Sony didn't lie. They could very well be right. The first number they got could've been absolute bull. Or it could've been not. Within the margin of error it even could've been 9.6 million.

Now compare the levels of outrage between 10m and 9.6m. One is quite close and the other makes VGC look like shit. However both could be in the margin of error even with superior sources.

So no, I don't say Sony lied. I say that I'm astonished by the discrepancy in the level of scrutiny that is directed towards VGC and Sony. Apparently less scrutiny is required towards the company with the confirmed bias. That's what I don't like.

We're talking about very minor differences here. Differences within the margin of error ~2% which by definition are untraceable.

So even if they tweak it they wouldn't hurt themselves because the numbers are sound. 200k more or less is irrelevant in Sony's eyes and pretty much every observer. Except on VGC where 200k can be the difference between VGC is quite close" and "VGC is shit!"

In my other post I made the example of 9.8m with a margin of error of 200k. Easily tweakable within the margin of error. But it still could be only 9.6 which is a lot closer to VGC numbers.

These aren't giant differences or errors. But the drama around it is exponentially bigger.

Well that is good to know than, it I think wouldn't have hurt  for you to start off with that statement , that you were waiting on the breakdown region data from Sony. It I think would have cleard this up a while ago.

Sony was scrutinzied over Guerilla Games decision on how to render Killzone ShadowFall's Resolution and even sued over it.

Sony was critized for having indie games.

Sony was lambased over the prices they set in the PS Now program.

Do you really think Sony would overlook something like this that can easily be proven once the data comes out?

Why is it now that these numbers are being called into question?

Why only Sony?

Why wouldn't they say around 10 million, why not just wait later on and say over 10 million later?

You don't need a press conference, these annoucements have been made before.

Why would Sony risk their positive PR on an unnecessary statement, positive PR which in large part is reason for their lead in the first place?

Is their a prescedent to this occurence, has this happened before? 

Is VGC undertracking the PS4 a new and rare occurence?

If you said the margin of error was 2% and Sony said 10+mill sell through, why not 10-10.2?

Wouldn't anything less than 10 million be lying, and wouldn't they immedetly be called out for it?

Why would PlayStation risk their brand name after barely surviving and breaking even off the PS3?

Why would they play it safe with the PS4 and then blow it before their first holiday season?

Why does ioi saying he doesn't have the data, call into question the validity of Sony's statement? 

How is it any valid basis to promote doubt on their claim?

Does ioi have more access to Sony's shipping numbers and retailer access than Sony does?

Your whole argument crumbles when you look at the margins we are talking about.

There is ZERO risk in slightly tweaking numbers that NO ONE has an accurate figure off. Sony could've said 10.1 or 9.9 and no one would've given a fuck. As you can clearly see in this forum that company numbers are taken as face value. Even if some "reliable" source would come out and Sony miscalculated by 2%. That's within the margin of error. You can't get a company for having made slightly wrong estimations.

Do you really think something like this would "risk their brand"? They had a massive security leak with millions of data sets of their customers lost. And now you're telling me that having slightly higher estimates than another estimate is risking their brand?

We're talking about VGC here. No one is risking anything. This is the only place where slight differences cause outrage. In the real world they don't.

And before you call me out on it. Marketing is a different beast. In marketing it's a giant difference between announcing 9.9m and 10m on a big stage like Gamescom.

For the first bolded question, it could be because some people are quite surprised at the rate the PS4 is selling. I am one of those people who are, but at the same time, I don't call Sony's numbers into question because they have access to more hard numbers and retailer data. VGC's data and methodology, on the other hand, are totally whack.

As for the second bolded, Sony said two key things during their Gamescom press conference: that they sold over 10 million PS4's and the 10+ million figure is sold-to-consumers sales. I think at this point, Sony much prefers announcing sales figures at a nice even whole number rather than saying that they sold 10.2 million PS4's. This is why we didn't hear anything from Sony since their previous 7 million sold-to-consumers PS4's announcement in April. Anyways, I'm really embarrassed to see so many people barking up the wrong tree.

But is that not the point? If ioi is waiting on breakdown numbers from sony for sale through data, would those numbers even really be upto date by the time he gets them? I mean ioi said in the past Sony and microsoft has handed over breakdown sale through data by region , How long ago was this data handed over and what, was the data's time frame of tracking?

Was it this year most recent data that Sony set to vgchartz for breakdown sale through data from Sony, a year ago. I mean the "past" could be as recent or over 2 or more years ago.

Companies have been sued for less.

Any damage to the brand is risk, nobody is saying that the PS brand will dissapear if they are wrong, but the damage is risk and the risk no matter how insignificant you claim it is, provides even less of a reward.

If you want to call Sony's numbers into doubt, that is your perrogative, but you cannot use VGC as reason to support that assertion, and their is no reason that this acusation should be limited to just this sales announcement or even this company in general.

This idea that Sony's estimates might not be over 10 million because ioi said he doesn't have the information is ludicrous.

Also you've merely made up the margins of error to fit your perogative, why not a Margin of error of less than one percent why not 5? You claim that Sony doesn't care about 200k units yet you are just speculating and have no evidence to back up this claim. Meanwhile, Sony has access to nearly all of the PS4 they have shipped, and nearly all of the orders they have recieved from retailers.

Except Sony was very clear about it being sold to comsumers... Geez, does this even need repeating?

No, VGC data is wrong because a source (Sony themselves) with an obviously far more accurate method of tracking sales has released their numbers which contradict VGC numbers.

(The reply below is not to you specifically but to the those insinuating about Sony falsifying their information, just too tedious to read back and quote individually):

And no, most of us don't think that Sony's numbers is 100% accurate. Anything of this scale with this many moving parts would be pretty much impractical in the financial sense to even bother perfectly tracking. What many of us are saying is that based on the combination of internal numbers, private tracking firms, internal sales analysts as well as publiciy available numbers the margin of error Sony would have would be far lower than that of VGC's. And that once they put together a number, then chances are it is far more accurate than the one provided here and should be defaulted to as the most correct estimate available.

The insanity comes from people who are doubting Sony's word "because they have an agenda". This is downright insanity to me. Yes, Sony HAS an agenda. It is: "don't be f***ing stupid and lose the momentum we currently have". Think about it, what possible sense would it make to risk your brand's credibility and current momentum (and yes a media embarassment like a "falsification of sales" lawsuit would be a huge blow to their current "we pro-gamerz" branding)? To what gain? It's a simple feel-good milestone announcement. What possible relevant sales benefit would that have (at this point)? At best it'd make existing PS4 owners feel good about their purhcase.

And yes. Companies lie. You'd have to be extremely naive to not think this. But companies do it INTELLIGENTLY. And it is in THE HOW, in the wordings they use within the lie that is important. The use of ambiguity and statements that can be (mis)interpretted. They use this not only to protect themselves (by allowing a level of deniability or reinterpretation), they also use it to avoid lawsuits or at least have an "out" in case they get slapped by one. What they DO NOT DO is make statements that are very damned clear and be not open to any form of interpretation unless they are very damned sure of the accuracy in what they are saying.

Someone cited the Apple vs Samsung lawsuit where top secret internal Samsung documents (Oh wow! Apparently companies CAN track their sales internally, who whuda thunk??) proved that statements announced by a Samsung exec to investors (not even a major press con, mind you) were misleading. Hell, they were even ambiguous about the wording they used on their sales. They were using "shipped" numbers and never clarified (at least to my knowledge) about the sales being sold thru to consumers until it was brought to court. And what happened to them? Competitor took advantage and not only used it in their suit but also used it to hurt Samsung's credibility and brand. This is actually a PERFECT example proving my point. How stupid would Sony have to be to start misleading people by using specific, quantifiable terms ("OVER 10 million" cannot be interpreted any way else outside of it being above 10 million) during a freakin major press conference against a ruthless company like MS (I mean, seriously, it's like they enjoy poking MS with a stick)? It wouldn't just be Homer Simpson stupid, it would be freakin Beavis and Butthead with a bottle of Tequila and a line of cocaine stupid. I refuse to believe Sony could be that dumb.

edit. Corrected to "What possible relevant sales benefit would that have (at this point)? As I'm aware that there IS a sales benefit to announcing sales numbers. Just not at a relevant enough impact within the current point (where Sony is already known to be dominant in sales).