Some odd things to note;

1. Didn't Iwata say that 75 games shipped over a million copies at GDC? 54 is a lot closer to our 51. It is hard to believe that the several games with 900K sales haven't already shipped 1 million. I would figured that games with as low as 750k would have already shipped 1 million as well.

2. Wasn't Nintendo's plan to ship 52 million units by March? I know they lowered their forecast but it is hard to believe that after two months later they still hadn't even shipped 50 million.

3. VGchartz has the wii at 49.5mil. Considering that the wii sells about 250-400k a week worldwide, it is hard to believe that nintendo only has two weeks worth of shipments on shelves.

4. I could swear nintendo stated they shipped 50 million units back in late March or early April. I would have to look into that though.

What I am trying to get across is the numbers are quite peculiar. Either the wii and software are overtracked or undertracked.

Congrats Nintendo, onward to 60 million!

2. Last year the goal for march was 50 million. Maybe it changed later, but a year ago they said 50 million in end of march.

3. It's not that hard to believe. Used to be not that long ago that Nintendo couldn't keep up with demand at all. And it said 50.23 million by end of March. And now it's May. So make that 6-10 weeks on the shelfs.

4. Yes... that's essentially it.

Thats the amount shipped

Congratulation Nintendo.

The companies themselves always report shipped numbers, i.e; sold to retailers. I don't think it is undertracked in here, they had to shave off the numbers quite a bit because the official Nintendo numbers showed the Wii at roughly 1 million less total lt shipped than we had total lt sales to end user.
I somehow doubt that it has moved 500k+ more without Brett somehow picking up on it, the sales figures just aren't that great right now, is all (and the HD console numbers are atrocious imo).

^^^ That said, isnt Walmart still not tracked by this site? That is a considerable chunk of missing sales if so, possibly 500k worth

VGChartz uses extrapolation and estimates for all numbers. Meaning that Wallmart IS actually in the numbers. Since VGChartz covers only a small percentage (I have no number, but it ought to be around 1-2% at most) of all retailers, this is not just done with Wallmart.

bardicverse; that is correct, no Walmart. But inversely, we must also remember that some consoles (all consoles of course) also go into a second set of hands via Ebay, Gamestop and other secondhand outlets.
The numbers on the front page lately would suggest that the Wii has covered the demand (at last) so I wouldn't be surprised to hear of a few hundred thousand consoles on shelves.

Very true, good point. I guess there's no exact science to getting perfectly accurate sales then. Would Nintendo make a separate announcement when they have sold through their supplies, or no? I recall reading past reports on sell through, though I'm old and can be mistaken.