Sorry if this is been asked before but i was wondering why the no. of PSPs sold on the next gen wars is in fact less than the no. supposedly sold by sept 2006 under the hardware shipments. Is it just me or am I missing something. Cheers

You assume that hardware shipments are the same as Units Sold which simply isn't the case ... Essentially, the September 2006 number was the number of PSPs that had left the factory and were either bought by a customer, owned by a retailer, or were sitting in a warehouse somewhere waiting to be distributed to retailers. Now, it has been suggested that since Nintendo typically announces the number of units sold to consumers (and Sony announces the number of units shipped) that Sony over shipped last year to make the performance of the PSP look better; IIRC 22 Million PSP systems shipped compared to 26 Million Nintendo DS systems sold.

Thanks, that makes more sense now then.

Nintendo just makes the figures "clearer". You can find their expected shipment figures quite easily (press releases), and they tend to update these figures regularly (i.e. if they need to increase production for instance). Sony does this as well - but the "terminology" is much murkier, and tends to be mis-represented by media outlets (and people). When you think about it - manufacturers have NO idea how many units are actually "sold" to consumers - no one knows this (as most retailers don't release this information for their stores, and they certainly aren't going to share it with their competitors!). To a certain extent, manufactures don't CARE - as they are paid by retailers/wholesalers - not consumers. If Sony ship 6mill PS3's (but only sell half), they still are paid for all 6million (depending on the actual purchaser, and the type of contract the have). Both consumer sales & shipment figures are valid and useful - as long as you understand what they are, and how they can be used.