No no no.... we need this thread to first reach 1000+ pages before the story ends. 99% of the fun is the thread not the actual numbers

You on the wrong site bro

I think Switch 2 must outsell Switch or Nintendo will have to release a tablet 😂 Either way if I was Nintendo I would end production of Switch once Switch 2 Lite is ready for launch. 

lol, I don't think so. I highly doubt they manufactured like four million consoles they didn't ship. Neither did Sony with the PS2. I guess we're talking about less than a 1 million difference between "manufactured but not shipped" and "shipped to actual retailers with the intent to be sold to actual customers". All I'm saying is Nintendo is counting sales to retailers, whereas Sony seems to have included things like demo consoles, etc. and now gives the total number of units manufactured / produced, if the comments in this thread are correct (I'm not an expert myself). And that's a bit curious, because one would assume that for all of their other consoles Sony also counts "shipped to retailers".

Have any actuall proof for that? 

As I said multiple times in my post (see bolded parts), I'm just going off what people in this thread are saying and my gut feeling. My only definitive statement was "Nintendo is tracking shipped consoles", which was an answer to your "the same goes for Nintendo" comment. If Sony actually counts all consoles they ever produced (including ones that ended up as demo units, etc.) in their number, then it wouldn't be an apples to apples comparison. But I don't know if they do (as I said). I'm also pretty sure every manufacturer uses sell-in numbers these days, so I don't think there needs to be any proof for that.

I think my comment came across to you more "Sony-negative" than intended. As I said, the number of demo units or units that otherwise would've been manufactured but not sold to retailers is most likely not in the 4 million range. That's just my opinion (as I stated) but to me, a statement like "Sony counted four million consoles that weren't shipped to retailers or customers" sounds extraordinarily excessive. 

A funny outcome for this would be for the Switch to land right in the grey-zone of possible PS2 sales, so we can discuss this forever lol. It would be a bit like in Formula 1 where people can forever debate whether Schumacher or Hamilton is the GOAT. 

Sony never shipped 160 million consoles. They would have 10000% have made a press release like they did for 150 million ... what you're the only game hardware in history to hit 160 million shipped and you don't even utter a peep about it?

Bulllllllll shit.

They never shipped 160 million units to consumers. Plain and simple. When Switch was approaching to overtake the PS2 they quietly release this "production number" onto the internet that inflates their total using a bunch of systems that were never sold to consumers. Who believes that's just a coincidence? lol, gimme a break.

The real number in the best case scenario for Sony is 159 million something, and it may well be below that. 

King Switch 1 is still fighting.

They need to release new bundles soon!

Exactly this. 

I’ve said this in a post a long time before - the fact that Sony never announced that they reached the 160m milestone back in the day is very telling. For a console to reach 160m is an incredible achievement and definitely worthy for a company to announce publicly - even purely as a PR flex if anything. For no announcement to be made (even to shareholders?), on what would have been a massive milestone of the highest console sales ever… doesn’t really add up and to me. Particularly to leave the offical total of at 15Xm for so long without an update. Just doesn’t add up.  

I highly doubt Sony sold 160m.

Public: What are the final sales figures for the PS2?

Sony: Ummm whatever the Switch sold + 1 million. 

I absolutely do think that Sony went into defense mode over the PS2's record when Switch crossed the 150m mark and this latest change to Sony's business data page pretty much confirms that.

The "more than 160.0m" that was listed previously was subject to many of us concluding that it did not sell 100k more, but now it has been changed to eliminate what little accuracy was present for a far more ambiguous "somewhere over 160m".  Why change it at all then unless it was simply to mask that all that is needed to top it is 100k more?  Or, to instead confirm that it did indeed exceed 160.1m, which Sony did not do.

And I agree that it is suspicious that Sony would not have announced that it crossed the 160m mark over a decade ago, but it still remains possible when we look at the PS3's total produced vs total sold.  But just barely.

The PS3's final manufactured number is:  88,159,116 units...

... and we know that the console actually shipped/sold 87.4m.  That is a difference of around 759k units that did not make retail.

Looking at the PS2's final produced number at 160,636,885 units...

... that would mean that no more than 636,884 units didn't make it to retail in order for it to be "more than 160m", which is possible, I suppose. 

But the idea that it could have reached 100k over 160m for shipped/sold units is just completely unbelievable now.

This is why I do hope that the Switch does beat the record that the PS2 holds currently; not because I'm a Nintendo fan, not just because this is likely the only shot left in my lifetime to see it broken, and it's not as if I dislike the PS2 at all... but because of Sony's complete lack of transparency regarding the console's sales. 

If Sony didn't resort to lumping shipment numbers together to hide lacking sales in the first place then we wouldn't have to rely on its ex-executives to set the record straight.  Seriously, it seems like Shawn Layden has confirmed more playstation numbers in the last few years than Sony itself.  Props to him, I guess.