Why is everyone attacking VGC over this? Even if we didn't have the data from this site, there have been other companies tracking the game (NPD, w/e in Europe), and none of it suggests the game will be approaching 1mil.

Yes, retailers probably overestimated demand by quite a bit. These things happen.

Yes it is sold to retailer, but that's all they care about.

therefore Motorstorm:PR = probable success

I'd say that publishers make much more than off of each game sold to retail.

Not to mention the fact that VG Chartz software numbers, in general, have a long way to go to catch up with the reliability of their hardware numbers, which are still off rather significantly every once in a while.

hrm. I'd say this means MS2 is somewhat undertracked. though not by a ton. 300-450k on shelves/in warehouses is definitely reasonable for this time of year.

So, by your estimates, being off by 300-450k is not being off by a ton? Even taking that higher number, the actual number would be over twice what VG Chartz has. If it were the lower number, it'd be almost three times. I'd say that's undertracking by a "ton".

Alright people. Lets establish some common ground here.

1. Sony's original Motorstorm currently sits at 3.67 million sales. That makes it a highly successful game (yes I know there were some bundles, no that doesn't change that it was a very successful game)

2. Sony is stating that Pacific Rift shipped one million copies to retail.

3. It is not in any way unreasonable to think that heading in to Christmas season with a larger user-base, retailers around the world might order one million copies of a sequel to a game that moved over 3.67 units.

4. Pacific Rift charted quite poorly in not just VGchartz, but also NPD and all the European charts as well.

5. It is not in any way unreasonable to assume that a sequel might not do nearly as well as it's predecessor. Especially when it's predecessor came at a time when there was relatively few quality software releases.

So why is there an uproar over the idea that perhaps the game hasn't sold nearly what it has shipped?

Its is common practice in the industry for retailers to return products that do not sell well or at all (this is for all types of products and not just limited to video games)

In most cases though, for the publisher to keep sales numbers on their books, they discount the original wholesale price of the game.  When the 30-day payment period is up, instead of a 2% discount, the retailer might receive a 10% discount for the game when the amount becomes due.  (Generally speaking, in business, you receive the product first than pay within a 30-day window.  The seller records the sale upon shippment or delivery).

The publisher would then record this additional discount as a loss via the next quarters books.

Sony can say they shipped 1 Million, but most likely what occured was a larger than normal discount on the wholesale prices enticing retailers to keep copies of the game rather than return them as part of the agreement to get a bigger discount.

Considering the holiday shopping season coming up ... it would be foolish to discount something that would not drive foot traffic.  I do not see more people coming to a best buy because motorstorm was $10 cheaper.  It makes more sense to sell the game at full price to people who want it and pocket a bigger profit.

Then again, both NPD, GFK & VgChartz could have severly undertracked MotorStorm.  In the end they are all estimates and Sony would know best on how many units was actually shipped.

It all comes down to the extreme nature of the disparity in numbers. The idea that 750,000 copies of the game are sitting on shelves just seems ridiculous to me.

@ Deviation - Are you suggesting that shipped numbers determine sales?

We know for a fact that the game isn't doing well at all by any tracking body. And we know it shipped a lot. So there's a pretty reasonable grounds to think there'd be such a discrepancy.