Remember that "sale" for Sony counts as "sale to retailer" not "sale to consumer" so it's highly likely that they would have moved 10million by the end of March

one thing you guys forget is that Sony said 10 million shipped which is around 8.8 million sold.So I think with yakuza and KZ2 sony will ship around 11 million and that's around 9.7 sold to customers

That's not right, because then you have to subtract the consoles sold in this financial year but shipped in last, which will be approximately equal to the consoles shipped this financial year but sold next financial year.

So we can pretty much use VGChartz numbers for the comparison

 The difference between "shipped" and "sold" is the inventory held by the retailers. There is no reason to assume that the retail inventory of March 2008 will be lower than that of March 2009. Therefore, it is a wash.

What is important is how many units moved through the system and this means "sold to consumers".

Exactly.

they will do it, but sell to people will be close.

I agree, but given it's going to be so close it will be easy for Sony to stuff the retail channel with 100-200k systems to ensure that they meet their targets. They can't be seen to fall short of yet another target.

Chance are they'll be within 300K. Let's just call the number VGC has it behind with for X

That means that if

Retail stock as of April 1st 09 > Retail stock as of April 1st 08 by X, Sony will have met their goals.

Is there any reason to expect the retail stock to be higher now, than in 08? For that to be the case, Sony (retailers) would have to expect a bigger Q2 in 09 than in 08.

I don't really know if they will expect that.... It sold 2.6M last year, can it sell 3M this year?

We will know how many they need to ship within a week, as they will release their Q3 report (calendar Q4) which will give us shipmets to add to the 4 million shipped for Q1 and 2.

Sony meant shipped to stores didn't they not sold to customers. They can have million extra units sold to stores an reach goals easily. They might even reach 10 million sold to consumers.