OP: I believe it is called "margin of error", look it up.

Mummelmann said: OP: I believe it is called "margin of error", look it up.

^^This.

Also, as soon as someone lists anecdotal evidence as support of a statistical claim, without providing any concrete proof, that person should be ignored. This will make your life easier.

The OP asks for a reasonable explanation when no logical conclusion has been reached. I'm sorry but when you base anecdotal evidence off a few regions and apply it to the world you have not done logical reasoning.

And seriously guys... when you see such lack of logical reasoning do not argue with him. Simply do as I have done and explain to him why he is wrong and let him restate it later with more thought.

ioi- dude you don't have to respond to things like this or posters like that. They obviously have no idea what they are talking about and no facts to back it up. Leave them to me haha. No need to burn reputations over guys like that. You got plenty of smart long time members who can take care of thinking like this haha.

@ ioi

Yes, I think it is. Everytime I compared the official figures, the PS3 was according to VGChartz more in stock than the 360. It wasn't like one time the PS3 and then the 360.

A dealer told me they get fewer PS3s at a time as it requires more space to store them. I think that's not bad reasoning at all and now with smaller PS3 slim boxes they are stocking more PS3s at a time.

23.8 million (sold to retail, end of June) - 22.7 million (sold to consumers according to VC, 4th of July)
31.4 million (sold to retail, end of June) - 30.8 million (sold to consumers according to VC, 4th of July)

So ~1.1 million PS3s at retail.
So ~0.6 million 360s at retail.

So these figures would suggest the exact opposite. I think it's healthy there's discussion with regard to this. And you shouldn't get upset, but the burden of proof to explain this is of course on you (something of course you have chosen for with this website).

kowenicki said: Mike.... do you think people held off buying a PS3 recently due to expected slim / price cut?

Of course and there were shortages of the 80 GB fat unit as well. It was expected sales to dip for a short while ahead of the slim version.

The extra PS3s sold to retailers were PS3 Slim inventory that were sold to retailers. PS3 Slim awaiting to be officially announced by Sony and released in September. Sony planned in advance the launch of the PS3 Slim.

Mike B the penny has dropped and now you can sleep easily tonight. I hope you were not going to lose sleep over this minor issue?

MikeB, what is your goal and is it worth this level of effort? Are you looking for a 400k adjustment to PS3? If you get it will it change anything?

I just do not see the point in complaining about an at most 2 percent difference in total lifetime sales that would not change anyone's view of how the market is behaving.

numonex said: The extra PS3s sold to retailers were PS3 Slim inventory that were sold to retailers. PS3 Slim awaiting to be officially announced by Sony and released in September. Sony planned in adviced the launch of the PS3 Slim. Mike B the penny has dropped and now you can sleep easily tonight. I hope you were not going to lose sleep over this minor issue?

That is a reasonable possibility. Walmart could easily put 50k+ orders on the books single handedly. If they order 30 units per store, that would be over 50k units recorded sales from Walmart. Add in Gamestop, Best Buy and Target and you could have several hundred thousand units recorded sales before the product even ships just in the US. And that's on top of the existing inventory of phat units.

Hahaha lol at Kowenicki! A supermarket :D

Anywho.. whats the definition of Shipped? They changed from Shipped to Sold to retailers, but what's the difference?

MikeB said: @ ioi Overtracking and undertracking fluctuate with regard to Japan/US, but for the rest of the world the 360 is usually well overtracked and the PS3 significantly undertracked." is not what I'd consider constructive. It sounds like a fanboy wanting PS3 sales to be higher than they are. Yes, I think it is. Everytime I compared the official figures, the PS3 was according to VGChartz more in stock than the 360. It wasn't like one time the PS3 and then the 360. A dealer told me they get fewer PS3s at a time as it requires more space to store them. I think that's not bad reasoning at all and now with smaller PS3 slim boxes they are stocking more PS3s at a time. 23.8 million (sold to retail, end of June) - 22.7 million (sold to consumers according to VC, 4th of July) 31.4 million (sold to retail, end of June) - 30.8 million (sold to consumers according to VC, 4th of July) So ~1.1 million PS3s at retail. So ~0.6 million 360s at retail. So these figures would suggest the exact opposite. I think it's healthy there's discussion with regard to this. And you shouldn't get upset, but the burden of proof to explain this is of course on you (something of course you have chosen for with this website).

And did he happen to tell you the relative frequency with which they get PS3 and 360 shipments?  Without that information your big box/little box reasoning is completely meaningless.