so this was the shipment number through Dec. 31th and two months later they announce that number sales and people think its shipped?


did they just stop making Ps3's for two months or am I missing something?

For crying out loud, when Sony release info showing VGC figures being a little off, the fanboys automatically believe Sony's figures are wrong, or misinterpreted differently, and believe VGC figures are more accurate?????

Sweet jesus, the guy plainly says, the installed base. No one has ever counted shipped to retail as installed base. It is probably a measure from registered PS3 serials. If not everyone registers their system, the install base figure is actually higher.

VGC is undertracking, that can be certain.

Christ, so you think 21.3 (every PS3 shipped as of December) has been registered? and if so they may have sold more than 21.3! How many PS3s do you think are sold??!!

No, I can tell you nowhere near all PS3s are registered, same goes for 360's and Wiis, heck I'm sure millions of console owners don't know anything about registering their console ...

Outside of big milestones(21.3 is certainly not a milestone) the big 3 only update the sales numbers with their fiscal reports.  Occassionally we'll hear approximations between these quarters, but since they're not legally binding there can be a good amount of spin with these numbers.

There are times also when a company will comment on regional sales. These are based on data from NPD, Famitsu, etc. and are actual sales to customers(what VGChartz tracks). But when the companies comment on worldwide sales, it's almost always shipped to retailer numbers as it's the only concrete tracking they can do(there are some countries without consumer tracking).

So yes I believe the 21.3 million is Sony's shipped amount as of Dec 31 2008.  Unfortunately, we won't really know for certain until May when they release their fiscal year end report.

EDIT: Oh and as for the term "install base" TWRoO is indeed correct, and here's the proof:

It may not be clear but under the watermark it reads "As of March 2007" and according to http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/06q4_sonypre.pdf they had only produced(as this is what they were still reporting at the time) 5.5 million.

I'd say 3... with a batch of 2.

After all "active installed base" is supposed to be people who are currently playing the console.

I doubt more then everyone (or even everyone) who owns a PS3 still uses it.

They've always reported sold to retailer in official numbers. I'm more excited to see what'll be done with the PSP numbers in here, they must still be off by millions going by the last official report, same with PS2 (6-7 million PSP on shelves and 15 million PS2 on shelves sounds extreme to say the least).
I do believe that the current PS3 numbers, however, are quite accurate.

I said this before when Sony chaEnged their reporting method from "shipped to warehouses", to "shipped to Ratail" - I wouldn't be suprised if Sony suddenly revert their reporting back to warehouses. This kind of stunt is something I could see Sony pulling!

Anyway, back on topic, They are refering to 'active' install base so I would be guessing "Sold to Customers". They are not reporting on PSN Accounts as in the same report it states, "more the 17 million accounts".

Either that or in December they reverted back to reporting "Shipped to warehouse" and now they are reporting "Shipped to Retail". LOL!!!

I believe Sony count shipped consoles as sold consoles. So there is always going to be a difference between shipped and sold to consumers.

No you can question the numbers, you just need to have some proof or basis. You don't have any. Making baseless claims is trolling.

There is no way Sony knows how many consoles they´ve actually sold unless they
call all there different retailers around the world and check with them. They always report sold to retailers when presenting numbers.