"Then that means only 700k ps3's were on store shelves on sept 29th or whatever.
Which by process of elimination means that it is undertracked because although the least possible outcome, it is the only possible outcome, from where i'm standing, because i know for a fact there are more than 700k ps3 in the wild. I would bet there is something like 3 million."

You're reasoning is backwards. If you believe there should be more PS3s in the wild, say 3million on store shelves, then VGChartz would be showing 2.3 million extra consoles in consumer's hands. In other words it would be overtracked by quite a bit.

"i will take your word for it rol that a little more than 1m is a good number.
Here sony was expecting to sell 6m by march and they only had 1m on the shelves. stupid sony."

Sony would be stupid if they mass produced 10 million PS3s and sold them all in April '08 to meet their fiscal goals, as would the retailers for ordering such a large amount to sell throughout a year. Shipments are made constantly to fill stock as it sells.

 And your ignorance amazes me.  Yes you had an "IF" in your statment, but if you had bothered to do even the slightest bit of research into how Sony gives their number and how VGChartz gives their numbers you would have known that your "IF" statment is "FALSE".

Kirby even gave you the explination of the numbers and YOU called him ignorent for doing so.  (Is this the definition of irony?)

When someone with much more experiance on this site corrects on the operations of this site, I suggest you listen next time.  Or you will look like a fool.

first part:
why would vgc show 2.3m in consumers hands? doesn't vgc tracked "sold to consumer"?
In general it is just my assumption that sony was listing sold to consumer since npd and we seem to have that number. I thought sony would be able to track its sales through those companies. I just don't understand how we can track those number but sony can't. Not only that but kirby posted that some companies could, if they wanted to, track "SHIPPED" to retail. So is there now a difference between shipped and sold to retail?
which is why i asked the questino that nobody has yet answered: Do some companies sell the product before they have even bought the product.

second part of your post:
yes they would be stupid to produce an outrageous number like 10m, so I am a little confused as to why you said that. But they would also be stupid to have only 1m on store shelves WW a month before christmas.

 Even with the 1 million on shelves, these are still sold to Sonys customers(retailers) and thus are counted toword the 10 million.  So they should have no problem reaching the 10 million mark this fiscal year.

i just have to reiterate that I'm not trying to attack anyone here.
The implications of all this just seem very bizarre.
only ~1-1.5m on shelves 1 month before christmas, 6m sales expectations by april,shipped vs sold to retail.... it's all just very confusing.

I am being ignorant? I just pointed out what the situation is...

retail versus consumer

Since you won't be reading this why would I even bother?

how are they going to replenish those?

If there are 1m on shelves those would have to be sold first correct? If there are only a million on the shelves and past november/december sales data shows 500-700k per week in some instances and 4-5m over the season, how can they keep up when their production level is behind even the wii (at 4m a month.)

They would need to be able to produce 4 million in a month which they can't....

This is my thought.

kirby, i think it is a little unfair to address phrancheyez the way you are doing because:
in the article sony says they track sold
the vgchartz article you posted says that a company should it choose to do so, track "shipped to retail"
sony says they track sold, your article says they track shipped.

it's just a discrepancy that nobody has thusfar explained.
obviously the numbers from vgchartz are not concrete enough maybe for a financial report, but isn't it possible they actually track sold to consumer like they said?
If not, then they do nothing more than ms or N who say they track shipped.

theprof00:
I'd suggest scrolling up the page and reading kirby's post on VGChartz's methodology. Sony's (and MS's and Nintendo's) financial statements legally have to report 100% factual information. Firstly, there is no 100% coverage of all sales to consumer so that would be impossible to report. Secondly, the consumer is not Sony's customer, instead the retailers are.

Sony will be making shipments(sales to retailers) weekly to meet holiday demand. There's also a term, stockpiling, which means Sony has been holding back some of their produced units in preparation to sell more than they're able to produce in a single month for times of high demand, such as the holidays. This was also mentioned in their report as an increase in inventory.

Hope that helps clear some things up.

EDIT:  And rest assured that unless you see a mention of "consumers," "end-users," "players," or anything else that would indicate a person that would actually be playing the console, that "shipped" and "sold" now means the same thing when used by Sony, MS, or N which is amount sold to retailers.  Even when they mention one of those words it has to be taken with a grain of salt at times, because PR like to spin things in their favor when they can.