I assumed the total sales numbers came from an external source like the other sales numbers.

I feel stupid for not thinking of the fact that they could be calculated by this site, in which case the numbers would indeed add up perfectly. sorry about that :p

That may be the case, but I believe that ioi said he took away some of the features because people were taking the database and using it to draw bad conclusions about the site. Essentially, they would compare data, but fail to take into consideration that his database doesn't have much information from before the PS2/GC/XBox era or other such things.

Anyways, If you really want to study the database, the only way you'll find out if you can have access is to pm ioi.

 Ahh ok.

Well, now that we have cleared that up, Ill comment about the residual thingy. I believe there is a "residual" factor in the Others/others category. There's been debate on these forums about where exactly those sales (which countries) in Others/others come from, and they sometimes seem to be too high. Anyway, I dont see anything strange about this, because if you track sales that often are adjusted afterwards (reports of shipment numbers from console makers) it's easy to use this "dump" category for sales numbers that dont add up.

(This is my theory, I dont think its been confirmed)