Not really a fair assumption to make since you have nothing to back it up. I disagree for the reasons that generally production line->consumer on most xboxes at the moment in the UK at least is around 2 months, check MFR dates of a sprinking of new xboxes and you will see that's roughly correct. The PS3 Slim sales boom occured in september onwards, it was obvious from the get go that sales were not going to be incredible for MS as opposed to xmas before from that time. My point in all this is, if there are 2.4 million consoles sitting around the average MFR date should be beginning of november!

Ashamed? What are you talking about ? Sony, Ninty, and MS count the overall systems they sold as shipped since they only keep track of what they've "sold" to retailers because that's where all their sales go.  When he says 39 mil sold, it's taken as sold to retailers simple as that.  It's not a secret evil MS move, it's just business.  Why use the tracked estimates of companies like NPD, when you can give a fact stated by your shipping manufacters that you've sold 39 million 360's to retailers WW?

You mean 39 mil WW? While I do think vgchartz numbers for it are low for 360 by the numbers we got at CES, it's not because it's less than 39 mil.  VGChartz gives estimates sold to retailers but MS gives definite numbers from what they've sold to retailers.  So subtract 39 mil from VGC's 360 numbers and you'll have about 2.2 mil which means that's how many they (VGChartz) believe are in retailers' inventory worldwide.  What some are questioning is if that difference of retailer inventory was less than 2 million during the holidays, then why would retailers have a bigger stock of it after.  While the answer seems clear that VGC's numbers are closed, there's also a few other variables that can be considered that VGC's numbers could (strong could) be pretty dead on with 360 numbers such as 360 not having a strong holiday as expected so they're backlogged and so on and so on.