I think Vgchartz is probably the most reliable source for hardware sales figures ( free source anyway 0 but I saw news in the forums of MS stating that they where 5 Million ahead of the PS3 , Vgchartz has the 360 at around 6.4 million ahead of the PS3 even taking into consideration the time difference between Vgchartz current figure and the news I saw last week , there seems to be an issue with the reliability of the data.

 It feels kinda odd saying "lol the PS3 sold the XBOX or vice versa by "X" amount" if i'm not really sure about the accuracy of the data i'm using.

Could some one explain please.

Best data we have as you said. Also we talked about that whole "winning by 5 million" thing and I think the conclusion that was made was that the MS PR guy misspoke or didn't know what he was talking about.

95% of the time, we're almost right on par with NPD, and even then, who knows which one is right?

We already have threads about this 5 million in Europe issue. Go take a look and they'll answer your questions.

Hardware is really spot on. Big games are really done well. For hardware it's easy to look at the latest quarterly release and compare that to the same time period in VGC and you will always get a difference that seems reasonable for the difference between shipped and sold. Same with big games, like GTA4.

Everything else is a much more "take with a grain of salt" type of thing. I'm sure they are close, but definitely not as accurate as hardware totals. Really, this is just because it is so difficult tracking and properly creating good trends for these lower games.

Personally my stance has been that the HW is extremely accurate if you look back a few months. The past 2-3 months at any time are subject to adjustments by ioi as various other data comes in from shipment numbers and whatnot. Nothing can be perfect but what's up here is amazingly comprehensive and when you consider it's completely free it's hard to argue against it.

Software seems less reliable and more of a WIP, especially with older games that are missing regions or entire sales altogether but I don't know where else you'd find such a massive database like this, much less for free.

The console manufacturers themselves spin the figures; VG Chartz doesn't. They coul be talking shipped, sold to retail or sold to consumers; they could be talking data from their own count, NPD, Media Create, Chart Track, VG Chartz itself, Famitsu/Enterbrain, GfK or any or all of the above. They could be talking up until last week, last month, last quarter; They could be talking only the last week, only the last month, only the last quarter, only the last year; They could be using estimates with their own "factors" added to the data to spin it one way or the other. They could exclude bundles. They could exclude certain SKUs. They could be using unit sales, revenue, operating income, operating profit, pre-tax, post-tax, asynchronous currency conversion, misleading scales - in short, anything that makes it appear to be great for them.

Comparing VG Chartz over the same range and time of data to most sources most of the time usually yields a +/- 10% figure. This is fact.

K thanx , didn't want a two pager my question has been pretty much answered.

The 5 million ahead was Microsoft estimating Sony shipments through 3/31/08 before they were public.

Its 19 million 360s shipped through 3/31/08 vs. 12.81 million PS3s shipped through 3/31/08 so its 360 shipments = PS3 shipments+ 6.19 million, not a 'five million' lead in shipped. 

Generally the hardware is very close, as is the big software, but the smaller software, especially in Europe is a lot worse, which makes the PSP software seem even worse than it is. The PS2 is less well tracked then the others, but the NPD struggles with that too