why ?

I just like to bash what deserve to be bash and praise what deserve to be praise

I make some maths.

MS Shipped = +39M (until December 31)
VGC Sales = +36.58M (until December 26)

VGC has one more week to count... last week end December 26 360 sells ~755k WW... for week end January 2 I expected ~450k.

Final Numbers...

MS Shipped = +39M (until December 31)
VGC Sales = +37M (until December 31)

2M on selves is acceptable... VGC petty acuurate again.

Oh, ok, I see.  My mistake.

Last year's quarter we had 6 million shipped and 5.6 million sold.
This year's quarter we had 5.5 million shipped and 4.5 million sold.
Undertracked in others by about 0.5+ million, it seems.

2 million on selves is not undertacked... is fine.

okay, I think we need to clear up how many consoles on the shelves is normal.

2 million would be enough to sell the Xbox 360 till the end of march without any shortages.

VGChartz Hardware data for the period 04th Jan 2009 to 21st Mar 2009:

That is what the Xbox 360 sold in 2009 right after the big price cut in September 2008. So in 2010 2 million consoles would be enough to satisfy demand for 3 months from now.

And please don't forget MS said + (!!!) 39 million consoles. Could be 39.3 million or whatever.

Are so many consoles placed at retail normal?

Please notice the 39M in the story linked to on in in the OP was not a quote but a statement (potential misstatement) by the article writer.

Mike from Morgantown

Listen to the boss!!!!

did you see the show? Because I did and Steve Ballmer said "more than 39 million Xbox 360s sold". Looks like a quote to me.

39 millions sold to customers, how many of them RROD'd though? The same goes for PS3. The HD consoles sales != install base, because the failure rate is too significant on those 2 consoles.