The “Others” numbers are up and seems pretty shocking to some, espacially the wide margin by which the 360 outsold the PS3.

“The 360 is Overtracked!” is a common cry of the disappointed PS3 fans. Well, is it really overtracked? Is there a 360 bias in VGChartz? Fortunately we have some correlative data to use in assessing the claim.

Microsoft  announced on November 19^th that the “XBox 360 sold 7 millions in Europe, up from 5 Millions in June”.

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/691143/Xbox_360_Sells_Seven_Million_In_Europe.html

Yes, as usual, these are “shipped numbers” and not “sold to consumers”. Still, since the average channel inventory (i.e. the number of units that sit on the shelves at the retailers) does not fluctuate greatly, it is very reasonable to assume that indeed 2M units were passed to European consumers hands during the period.

Going to the VGChartz archives, VGChartz reports the European sales of the 360 in the the relevant period (June 7^th – Nov 14^th ):

So together VGChartz reports that the sales of 360 in Europe is 1,536,679 for the period. Significantly under Microsoft’s official numbers of 2M units.

The simple math means that VGChartz was actually undertracking the 360 in Europe by 465K units till now and therefore any claim of “overtracking” bias is unfounded.

No. Not that much. 465K is about what the 360 sold in all of October in “Others”– and this would be just the increase over the regular inventory so altogether it would be about 2 full months of channel inventory. We are talking early November still and the retailers have a long way to go to the busy season. Stocking the shelves and holding so much inventory so early and spending so much capital makes no sense.

Moreover, the discrepancies showed up much earlier – in the September earning release of Microsoft it was apparent that the VGChartz 360 numbers were very off for “Others”.

See: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=49090

So you guys were off by about 40% already at the end of september - this is not a Xmas problem.

Or they rounded the numbers in their press release...

In any case, your point is valid, the undertracking/overtracking argument is partly desperation.

MS has about 2 million 360s lying around on shelves? Seems like a bit much...how much do they normally have?

P.S. I'm pretty much just posting in here so I can keep tabs on the thread. Sounds interesting.

They cannot round it up. It is a illegal for a company inflate its business results in public statements. People can go to jail for doing something like that (see Enron).

Remember - this information may used as input for financial analysts and investment brokers as part of their assessment of the Microsoft business. Investment Buy/Sell decision are made based on these inputs. This is why no one will play with these numbers. What Microsoft (and Sony and Nintendo) report in public statements is pretty much exactly what they have in their books.

Your forgetting that Microsoft includes Australia and New Zealand and other countries for what it calls "Europe" when talking about sales.

As for what console has been overtracked/undertracked -- wait until we get worldwide shipment numbers.

No they don't. VGChartz invented "Others" as Europe and any other country that is not in America or Japan.

Microsoft have a very precise and legal definition of Europe that is based on the geographic location of the country. If a country is outside of the European continent then it will not be call Europe. Again, nobody mocks with the numbers - they can go to jail for it. See my post above.

i dont understand for what reason 360 sold that much. black friday isnt here yet, and where well away from christmas.

thanks for clearing that up.