Oh I forgot ... "and if shortage of wii is real how it can sell 670000 in this month?" Well if you add just what Japan has sold in these three weeks, Wii sold is over 330,000. So I would bet that NA is around another 300,000 then the rest is easily 50,000 to 80,000. So all in all another 670,000 or so tus far is very much a real estimate. You'all need to quit being such whiners and think with a little basic comprehension.

Not sure why no one has bothered to point this out yet but sales figures for the Wii are very easy to determine outside of Europe anyways. NPD tracks the US. Media Create tracks Japan. Nintendo's figures are almost the exact same thing that is being reported by these groups. These same companies track the xbox 360 and PS3. Even Microsoft admits the 10.4 million is the number of units that shipped as of Dec 31. ALL of the data that is available backs up Nintendo's sales figures. Also for a console which is in good supply 2 million unsold units is actually pretty standard. Look at the PSP. The number of unsold units is amazing. If the shortage is real how can it sell 670,000 this month? First we have solid sales figures every week out of Japan so we have a KNOWN sales of 371k systems so far for January (through the 22nd). I expect world wide sales for the Wii will be between 1 to 1.5 million for January once all the figures are counted (my thinking is its going to be closer to the 1.5). Which would put it at around 4.5 to 5 million total consoles sold (to customers not stores).

Can anyone explain why the numbers on the website increase before official data is made public? Japanese data suggests the rates Wii, PS3, and 360 have sold in January. But where does the European and N.A. sales data come from before NPD and European sales tracking is complete? With that said, in the case of the Wii..going from 3.19 (nintendo's 2006 year end number) to 4.24 million (vgcharts current number) seems reasonable. Wii sold 400k+ in Japan in January (through the 28th, it may approach 500k) Likely 250-350k in both Europe and North America. But my concern is, it could be alot more, it could be alot less. If 800k of the 4 million shipped last year reached stores in January for instance, plus another 1 million Wii's shipped to each market...the numbers could be much different. It could also be (though much less likely) that 800k from the 4 million shipped in 2006 was enough to cover January worldwide demand. Either way, although Wii is likely to have a userbase of approximately 3.5-5 million right now, there is not enough data to back up a claim higher than 3.5-3.7 million. I believe PS3 and 360 are the same way. However, because PS3 demand seems to be far less, and it is not available in Europe, the lack of data is not as important. 360, as has been said, is readily available (I have seen it readily available for purchase in recent travels across 12 US states - I'm a pilot)

They are just projections made by the owner of the site and they will adjust accordingly once official data comes in. Think of them as predictions until the NDP numbers come out.

Nintendo reports numbers of units sold to customers. Microsoft reports numbers of units shipped to retail. Sony reports numbers of units shipped/in transit.