simple, they calculate the shipped hardware number with the shipped software

- This post was totally screwed up, is the forum having problems or something?

people visiting this site should really brush up on concepts like 2statistics", "samples" and "extrapolations". please also refer to "advanced/ enhanced guessing", "guesstimates" etc.

I doubt that is a very common practice. Shelfspace is rare, but so is storage room. except the bit of advertisment, not selling a product that has been bought is not a good thing for a store. it binds capital.

Which poster had the animated signature explaining VGChartz numbers? I can't remember who it was but if you are reading this post, please post your animated signature so that we don't have to explain why Nintendo's numbers were higher than the VGChartz numbers.

Or Antartica.

It wouldn't shock me if retailers were holding back stock for black Friday as well.

 What for? Why? please explain. Situation: retailer has one Wii. Two options:

 A) Put it on shelf and sell it within 2 days NOW for 250 USD and hence free up storage space and shelf space to put a new product on. And make a profit off the wii (20USD? ) that you can the either invest in new products or bring to the bank where you get interest.

 B) Leave it in storage, meaning you will have to sit on your investment longer ("opportunity cost") and the STILL SELL AT 250 USD.

Why on earth would you do that? 

Consider that Nintendo has been shipping more than a million units per month, and Nintendo is talking about the number of units sold to retailers, not the number of units that arrive at retailers or the number of units sold to consumers. Nintendo could have literally sold units (units that have been ordered) which are still in the process of being shipped out.

A 1 million discrepancy between the number of units stores ordered and the number of units sold through to consumers is no surprise for a device that\\\'s selling this quickly and shipping over a million per month. There could be 500,000 or more in the shipping/ordered-but-not-yet-shipped pipeline!

Stores sold out of Wiis may have tens or hundreds of Wiis on order (sold, according to the manufacturer). Those Wiis don\\\'t yet use any more shelf or storage space for the retailer than what is designated for them already.

I imagine that in the retail business it is pretty reasonable to speculate that the manufacturer sells product to retailers about a month faster than they\'re sold to consumers. The retailer doesn\'t even have to pay for the product for the first 30-60 days after they buy it.

For the same reason that retailers sell certain products at a loss on black Friday.

You guys are all questioning that report with VGCharts having a lower sold amount listed than the article has. But a million here or there doesn't interest me because we all know that Nintendo offered the WII at the right time and people are embracing right now more into simple game play fun. Rather then the HD capable competition.
The one thing that has me confused, they claim that the WII is selling faster then any other console ever. Is that true? I would think the earlier systems that are over 100 million (GB, PS, PS2)would have had better first year sales then the 13 million claim in the article. Does anyone know the 1st year numbers for the other high selling systems?