they can't lie, but they can spin, twist or cherry pick. sometimes a combination of 2 or maybe even all 3.

The Others number here on VGC includes a bunch of places outside Europe, which haver around a million 360s sold. Not entirely what these places are.

If you look at the VGC numbers from Europe only, you'll see that the 360 and PS3 are extremely close. Then if you take into account that Sony talks of shipped rather than sold, and their PR has a reputation for "conveniently rounding numbers", everything makes sense.

PR people can lie, they do it all the time. Its the fiscal reports that need to be truthful.

I don't think either of them is lying really, they are just basing their assertions on different sets of numbers...and they're probably looking at it from funny angles to make it say what they want it to.

Either way one of the big things to note is that Sony PR numbers should be assumed to be "sold to retailers" unless explicitly stated otherwise. VGC does not track "sold to retailers" VGC tracks "sold to consumers".

The "Others" isn't just Europe, it includes Australia, South America and other parts of Asia. I'm guessing the PS3 has matched the 360 in Europe but is still a million behind in those other areas.

I taught that in Australia teh PS3 was also more popular than the 360 and I find it hard to believe that there are one million more PS3 in the stores than 360's

Why do you assume there are a million more in stores?

The PR says that the PS3 shipped sales (and yes, they always report shipped) are that figure, they don't claim their 360 figures are the shipped amount, and i doubt they'd use shipped figures, but rather estimated 360s sold to consumers when making comparisons, as it makes them look better without lying

Other = Europe + Other

1 million overtraked its too big

Realistically, Sony is claiming that they have shipped one million more PS3 systems than Microsoft has claimed to ship ... Being that companies have (in the passed) stuffed the channel by 4 Million pieces of hardware (or more) I wouldn't necessarily claim that the PS3 is being undertracked; although, ioi should (and probably is) verify that his methodology and data support his estimate for PS3 sales in Europe.

I'm sure that there are more PS3s than 360 on European store shelves. Europe has been Sony land basically forever, because there was no big console market before the Playstation was introduced. For retailers who for a decade have made good business with Playstation the PS3 is still the heir apparent until utterly proven otherwise. By comparison, the 360 is a niche product and the Wii is still a newcomer that has to prove its staying power.