I don't really look into it meaning anything. PR is not about just spinning bad numbers into good numbers, it's also about spinning good numbers into better numbers. 

Makes me wonder why they didn't go for shipped this time though.

Don't really see the point in doing that though. Average Joe sees 3.8m for Uncharted 3 and 2.7m for Uncharted 4, he doesn't really know or care about sell-in vs. sell-through.

I think it would have been more effective to announce sold-in a few days after launch. 

Average Joe doesn't see this PR to begin with.

Yes they do. Why do you think PR is full of spin that anyone with their finger to the pulse of the industry could read right through. 

Perhaps they want to make it so people can't make a 1:1 comparison between UC3 and UC4.

You would have people saying "yeah but its just sell through, those copies are just sitting on a shelf somewhere looking pretty".

Investors and the like, whom the PR is probably for, do know the differnce between sell in and sell through.

Investors prefer sell-in.

I see. Care to back up with any sort of evidence why you think the mainstream gamer pays particular attention to company PR pieces about sales?

Or do you think the average gamer also frequents message boards, and specifically boards that expose him or herself to this kind of PR. Because I'm not really seeing how your coming to that conclusion.

Perhaps they didn't go for 'shipped' this time because they're really happy with the 'sold through' numbers. In other words, it met expectations and the sales are great.

These articles go all over from gamefaqs to neogaf to /v/ to N4G to IGN. A lot of people read them and many of them fall right for the PR spin. Even on NeoGAF, people were drinking the Halo 5 PR kool-aid. These are not just investors and sales age, these are gamers. But no, obviously the most casual of players aren't really going to be on gaming forums or sites so they aren't going to see this. 

"Average" gamer doesn't mean much, and is an empty, meaningless word. The "average" gamer doesn't read forums, but he hardly buys games either. Sergey of SteamSpy did an interesting piece that I think explains it better than I ever could. 1% of Steam owners own 33% of the games, 20% own 88% of the games. You shouldn't try to appeal to the "average" gamer. 

I'm not sure what you're so argumentative about? Are you saying that PR spin doesn't exist? Are you saying that only investors and sales age reads these PR pieces? 

I knew you would try to get at that, but there is nothing to suggest that. Why you (GribbleGrunger) would try cannibalize Uncharted 3 sales to praise Uncharted 4 sales I won't understand though.