but whats the position based on revenue at that 99 euro dvdplayer pricepoint?

Funny thing, I got a General Electric DVD player in 2001 for $99 whilst the PS2 was $299.

Yet people kept saying PS2 was the cheapest DVD available.

Things huh!!

So a year after launch heh

I think this entire thread is based on the faulty premise from this post. 0.51m is almost certainly not the discrepancy between production shipments and sell-in, and it's impossible for us to know what the true discrepancy is without more info from Sony.

Let me give an example. We have two sets of data for the same console: One is production shipments and the other is sell-in. Cumulative sell-in should always be lower than cumulative production shipments, although in an ideal world they would be equal once a console is discontinued and all remaining stock is sold to retailers.

Consider the sales/production of this fictional console:

Now let's say that from FY1-4, the manufacturer only shared the production shipments, in FY5, they shared both production and sell-in, and from FY6 onward, they only shared sell-in. If we tried to use your solution to figure out the actual final sales, that would give us this:

See what happened here? You're combining the two different sets of data and then subtracting 0.5m because of the difference in FY5 (so we're using 14.0m instead of 14.5m in FY5), but that's functionally the same as "use production shipments until FY5, and then add on the annual sell-in numbers from FY6 onward". This gives us lifetime sales that are 2.5m too high.

What would a realistic difference be? We can look at the PS3's sales for clues. It launched in the same year that Sony made the switch in their hardware reporting, so we know what the exact gap was between cumulative production and cumulative sell-in as of March 31st, 2007:

PS3 Production Shipments: https://web.archive.org/web/20120609161633/http://scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps3_e.html

PS3 Sell-in: https://web.archive.org/web/20140702143333/www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps3_sale_e.html

Production was 5.5 million while sell-in was 3.5 million, so the gap was 2 million. PS3 then had sell-in of 9.1 million in the next fiscal year (FY2007). In that same year, PS2 had sell-in of 13.7 million, so it's possible that PS2 had an even larger gap than 2 million at that point because it was selling at a faster rate than PS3.

If I understand this correctly, then it also means that the XBox360 may have outsold the PS3. Whatever systems the PS2 may be "shortchanged" on were counted toward the PS3 instead.

You're right there is a problem with the figures which is this: The FY05 manufactured units being duplicated in FY06 shipping figures has been accounted for but the FY06 manufactured units being duplicated in FY07 shipping numbers is not, so the true PS2 shipments as of March 31st 2012 is 157.3m MINUS however many FY07 shipments were manufactured in FY06.

Secondly "I think this entire thread is based on the faulty premise from this post." is not the case at all, the thread and OP don't even use the 157.3m as of March 31st 2012 figure to show PS2 must be over 158.6m. It uses a 155.1m as of March 31st 2012 figure, the 157.3m figure was mentioned in an edit in the OP and was not used for the whole post.

I think it's less being "shortchanged" and PS2 numbers being given to PS3 and more PS2 numbers were just never looked at because they were obscured and Sony never gave us a total. A lot of people just accept "155m lifetime".

After all the 80m Nov 2nd 2013 PS3 figure is given after the PS2 was discontinued, so as of that date PS3 shipped 80m and the PS2 didn't exist anymore so PS2 couldn't be taking away from PS3.

The basis of the 158.6m to 161.9m is the minimum and maximum PS2 could have shipped with PS3 still reaching 80m as of November 2nd. The only reason there is a range is because we don't know how many of the 3.3m PS3's shipped in the 2013 holiday quarter were shipped before Nov 2nd and how many were shipped after. Thus the 3.3m range (all 3.3m before nov 2nd, all 3.3m after nov 2nd).

Trying to break down again:

PS3 shipped 63.9m by March 31st 2012

PS2+PS3 combined ships 16.5m in the year ending March 31st 2013

PS3 ships 3.1m from April 1st 2013 to September 30th 2013

PS3 shipped 80m by Nov 2nd 2013

If PS3 had accounted for 13m of the 16.5m combined figure then PS3 would already have reached 80m by September 30th 2013. So at an absolute minimum where PS3 ships no units between September 30th and Nov 2nd, the PS2 ships 3.5m in the missing year of data, add that on to the widely accepted 155.1m as of March 31st 2012 and the lifetime PS2 is brought up to a minimum of 158.6m.

I've not looked into PS3 shipment numbers to see what the potential lifetime range is, as again this is a console we never got lifetime figures for, but it's not getting units from the PS2 unless someone completely ignored the 80m Nov 2nd figure as the PS2 didn't exist anymore when we got this final clear figure.

To update on this found this from ZhugeEx:

"PS2 Production Shipments were 117.9 million as of March 2007. At this point Sony switched from reporting production shipments to hardware sell in. Hardware sell in at this point was 115.6 million." from this thread

So this is what brings the shipped numbers to 155.01m as of March 31st 2012, finally found some rationale for that figure has everyone quotes it without any source or explanation. 

But yeah like I said in my previous post, the thread was created with the 155.01m figure used as a basis, 158.6m is the minimum PS2 sales with that 155.01m number.

My bad that was meant to be March 31st 2012 lol, the figure came from adding together Sony's fiscal numbers for Manufactured FY99-FY06 and Shipped FY07-FY11. But according to ZhugeEx the difference between manufactured and shipped was a lot greater than the 0.51m I thought was accounted for.

155.01m as of March 31st 2012 is as far as I can find the correct number, but even that it's difficult to find a source. I just have this as explanation:

"PS2 Production Shipments were 117.9 million as of March 2007. At this point Sony switched from reporting production shipments to hardware sell in. Hardware sell in at this point was 115.6 million." from this thread

ZhuugeEx says 155.1m in this post, but adding the fiscal numbers from sony to the 115.6m figure actually brings the total to 155.01m

But yeah with this 155.01m figure, PS2 ships a minimum of 158.51m lifetime, if it had shipped less than this from the combined PS2+PS3 figures then PS3 would have reached 80m as of September 30th 2013, but the announcement from Sony that year was 80m as of November 2nd 2013.

Wow, I can't believe no one in all the threads etc I've been through linked that page, very useful. I guess I can try and pick apart the post 2013 fiscals to see if there's any data to prove how many of those 16.5m PS2+PS3 combined figures were PS3 to get to 87.4m as of March 31st 2017.