Stop worrying about hardware numbers. Software numbers are the one that make money for the companies. I say it's better that they sold less, considering that PSP doesn't sell much software, for obvious reasons.

sony said the actual sales of the console have reached 50 million.

You guys are being silly.

Sony had shipped 49.6m PSPs to retail through December 2008. They just announced they had shipped 50 million. Yes, they call it 'unit sales', but that is because they call production shipments 'shipments' and because you buy PSPs from stores, and not from Sony directly.

This is in the article I linked, but there is some evidence they over stuffed the channel in the December 2008 quarter. The attach rate mysteriously dropped to 3 games per system in the holiday quarter. They've shipped 200m games for 50m systems. That means the attach rate shouldn't drop for a holiday quarter unless there is too much hardware out there for the software shipped. Wii, PS3, DS, PS2 attach rates were all within expected rates for the holiday quarter, PSP rates were 25% to 33% lower.

I also emailed a Sony contact who confirmed it was 50 million PSPs sold to retail, i.e. "unit sales", i.e. what we've been calling shipped.

Oh Ok

VGchartz has undertracked a lot of games. MGS4 for example, has already sold 4.5 million copies worldwide.

 No, it has not. The 4.5 million number you are quoting isn't even about MGS4. It is the total shipped figures for the entire MGS series for the year. Secondly, it is just shipped. So there is absolutely no way 4.5 million copies have been sold has 4.5 million copies haven't been made and sent to retailers yet.

 Like we all know the PSP had horrible holiday sale, espacially in America compared to previous years thus alot a psp remained unsold. But, one thing remains, It's hard for me to believe 5 million psp were out there. 

Go post on the foxnews of gaming aka N4G then.  The bottomline is that Sony profits dropped like a rock, based on poor sales and over supply chains.

PSP had 'horrible holiday sale, especially in America'? 'Compared to previous years?' The numbers are almost exactly the same for December 2007 and December 2008...

Defending vgchartz numbers in this situation is just wrong. There is no way possible there are more then 2 million sitting on shelves. Boxes may be small, but so is their shelfspace. It doesnt get the pyramid treatment the consoles do. Now deal with it.