Let's set the record straight on Sony's sales forecasts and shipments for the PS3, and discuss what they're going to do in their next financial report (Q2 2007, to be released about three months from now, mid October I suppose). This is because I'm sick of seeing multi-page threads being opened with wrong premises, which misleads everyone and decreases our community's prediction and judgment abilities.

Facts:

- In their Q1 2007 report (that's first quarter of fiscal 2007 year), they changed their counting method to counting the number of PS3 shipped from their warehouses to retailers. They also changed their previous forecast to mean 11 million consoles shipped to retailers (see discussion later in this thread).

- Using that counting method they reported to have shipped an additional 710k PS3 in the first quarter of fiscal 2007 year - April, May and June.

- In their Q1 2007 report presentation, they revealed some interesting additional numbers:

• At the end of fiscal 2006, they had 1.9 million PS3 in inventory
• At the end of Q1 2007, they had about 2.3 million PS3 in inventory

- The numbers above mean that they manufactured about 1.11 million PS3 in the Q1 2007 period (370k consoles per month).

Now for some discussion:

In the same report (Q1 2007) and respective conference, they said that their forecast was to be kept at 11 million shipped PS3 during fiscal 2007, but using the new method of counting shipped consoles. This means that they're hoping to ship 10.29 million PS3 to retailers during the last three quarters 2007. To attain that goal, they have to manufacture at the very least 7.99 million consoles in the 9 remaining months (or 890k per month), and ship 1.14 million consoles per month to retailers. This is similar to current Wii levels in terms of shipments.

As many have said throughout this forum, this seems impossible to attain for Sony. 10.29 million shipped PS3 in three quarters means 3.43 million shipped PS3 per quarter. They did 710k in the first quarter, which means in the last three quarters they will have to ship almost 5 times more than during Q1 2007, a 383% increase in shipments!

This raises at least three questions:

1- Why did they choose to keep their forecast at 11 million despite the fact that it seems impossible to even come close to it?

2- What are the shipped numbers going to look like by the time Q2 2007 is over, meaning end of September?

3- Are they going to keep their forecast in their Q2 2007 financial report? If not, by how much will they reduce it?

I hope this post has been at least informative, and that you guys will give your opinion on those three questions and maybe some more :)

PS: Pointers to sources for most of the numbers above are at:

http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?start=50&id=4758

1. To encourage third-parties who don't look too closely to develop for the PS3 because of the claimed future install base.

2. I think sales trends will drop to pre-price cut levels as 60GB stock drops, and shipments will have to decrease similarly.

3. It'll drop slightly, but only enough to appease the shareholders because their figures aren't particularly accountable so there's no reason for it to be realistic when that realism would ensure third-parties would drift away. I say estimate of 9 million in Q2.

1 - to encourage developers as Game_boy said, but also investors who don't really understand that the PS3 will never attain that number. Sony couldn't put out a realistic estimate since investors would take their money out of Sony, since most people know that the Playstation is an important part of Sony's business.

2 - I think they'll do over a million. Just. So their shipped numbers will probably be around 5.5 million

3 - I agree with Game_boy here. I see a small drop, but they can always claim huge increases over Chrstmas season. I think 10 mil.

so by next March, sony are saying they will have made 16.5 million PS3s? are they insane, at minimum, 6 million of those won't be sold [consumers]by then, so accounting for 1mil retail stock Sony will have to be holding onto 5 million consoles.
i remember reading a topic earlier about the Wiis production rates, and someone said something about it being foolish to suddenly start making more stock because generally ninty would be making one year contracts with people to produce certain numbers per month, and if they jumped into that then they could end up with too much surplus a year later..... maybe this is what sony did before they realised the PS3 wasnt selling, they might have thought ''ps2'' when making contracts with suppliers.

True, and well pointed out.

EDIT - except for the 16.5 million number. You can't add the 5.5 and 11 million numbers together since one is for factory->warehouse shipments and the other is for warehouse->retailers shipments. See my post below.

TWRoO's post prompted me to do some more quick calculations, which reveal some interesting numbers:

PS3 numbers for end of fiscal year 2006 (31st of March 2007):

• manufactured by Sony - 5.5 million (according to Sony)
• in Sony's warehouses - 1.9 million (according to Sony)
• shipped to retailers - 3.6 million (according to the numbers above)
• consumers have - 2.78 million (according to vgchartz)
• retailers have - 0.82 million (according to the numbers above)

Adding Sony's FY 2007 forecasts, we get 14.6 million shipped to retailers in total by 31st of March 2008. Not 16.5 million shipped to their warehouses as some people have assumed.

• manufactured by Sony - 6.61 million (1.11 million during this quarter)
• in Sony's warehouses - 2.3 million (400k more than by the end of March)
  
• shipped to retailers - 4.31 million (710k during this quarter)
• consumers have - 3.65 million (870k sold during this quarter)
• retailers have - 0.66 million (160k less than by the end of March)

As far as I've seen, I consider this thread to have the most complete information on the internet about the PS3's lifetime so far. I doubt Sony even wanted some of those numbers to be known, but they gave enough information to allow them to be calculated...

Why do you hate sony? And everytime I say something good about sony you call me a fanboy, again why do you hate sony?

Probably the same reason some PS3 people hate the wii and Xbox, and why Xbox 360 people hate Wii and PS3.  They feel threatened that the other system is going to take off and "steal" all the good games.

 Oddly not to many Wii people seem woried about 360.

 Seems like a silly arguement to me I mean even the Gamecube had a number of awesome games despite being mostly shunned by 3rd parties.   Might also seem silly to me because I plan to own all 3 at some point however.

Let's try not to derail this into a flamewar...

I wouldn't mind doing it, should I send it to you when it's done? Or maybe one of the mods should do it instead...