Well said sir, well said

I agree. While i do believe that ioi does a fairly decent job with numbers. From time to time his numbers have been off. NPD only reports on USA whilst VGC reports on NA. In June NPD reported PS3 numbers at 410,000 i think for USA alone compared to VGC which had PS3 numbers at 320,000 i think. More than 100k when you factor in NA.

I'm not saying that NPD is 100% correct, but it is more accurate and reliable. No offense ioi but i think alot of people would agree with me that you are undertracking the PS3 a fair bit lately and overtracking 360, at least in America.

That is all.

You missed the simple solution.

There are Ps3's in stores, but they're not being bought :P

What makes it more accurate?

A larger sample?  That isn't necessarily the solution when dealing with extrapolation.  If your missing a major discriminatory component it can throw the results way off because the larger sample will represent a less realistic representation. 

In this case missing a retailer like Wal Mart.

I don't see what is so hard to believe about ioi's claim?

Console hardware is sold at a very low margin, and when a company decides to reduce the price of their console it is likely that they will be forced to compensate their retailers in some way. After a new "Better" sku is introduced at the same price a company has to eliminate the old sku in some way, typically by lowering the price. As you can imagine it is in a company's benefit to have inventory as low as possible when introducing a new console sku.

Before Sony even announced the new sku it is likely that 40GB inventory in their Warehouses and in the Retail Chain was pretty minimal, with some stores (obviously) having a much larger inventory than others. As stores run out of stock they can't order more of theo 40GB because it is discontinued, the Metal Gear Solid bundle is being released in limited quantities, and the 80GB model is unavailable until later. These stores are (therefore) left with no PS3's for a couple weeks.

Now, when someone walks into a store and sees that a product like the PS3 is sold out there is (probably) a 50% to 66% chance that they will give up their search for the moment and wait for a couple weeks for a restocking ... Stores which are close to stores that are sold out will (likely) sell out fairly quickly themself due to spill-over sales, and after a person has checked the handful of stores close to his first choice it is highly likely that they will give up. What this means is a partial sell out will have an impact on the number of systems sold.

360 will easily win Julys NPD

I really hate to say... "I told you so"

but here's the July's number.

Nintendo DS--608,400
Wii--555,000
PlayStation 3--224,900
PlayStation Portable--221,700
Xbox 360--204,800
PlayStation 2--155,500

now... I'm no math major, but I sure don't see a sign of shortage on PS3.

@ KoW

You told us so.

Every time the ps3 gets outsold by the 360 on vg it actually means the ps3 outsells the 360 for NPD. Good numbers all around for playstation.