Another day, another rumor....I don't believe they are being biased but this news seems like an attempt just to create a story even without having much to go on, slow news day, I like the last sentence:

"That being said, would you buy from Microsoft, or any other company for that matter, if they were cheating their sales?"

-Keyword; "IF", but really why would the average gamer even care?, yes I'm interested in how many consoles M$, Sony & Ninty have sold but only because I find the whole videogame industry interesting and eventually I'd like to do more within the industry than just buying games, etc. The average gamer either thinks the 360 is worth buying or they don't. -That's it. The only time avg gamers care about "internal" business policies and practices are when they are directly related to affecting the games quality of their games or console....otherwise he's implying that gamers might not buy 360's because M$ hasn't sold as many as they claimed. "IF" is a powerful word, there's no limit to whats possible as long as you include those two letters -lol

yup... i really want to know when MS says "sold" - is it shipped or sold to the retailers? and are the units that were replaced (due to the red ring problem) being added to the total number of "sold"?

and while MS is explaining this (after accepting that some drives scratched discs) might as well come out with the total number of "rings of death" incidents! just like how they proudly talked about 6 millions online registration!

come on! the issue has been there for ages... about time they tell us something.

EDIT: ok who just disagreed with me??? atleast give a reason! don't just click on it! losers!

Oh no I feel so cheated... I'll have to sell my 360 now since it's the sales figures I care about and not the actual games.

The only real purpose sales figures provide (especially considering the major gaps between console release dates) is fanboy fodder to start arguments with. Those of us with half a brain should realise two things:

(a) The only people how know how many have really sold are the companies making them

(b) Big companies lie, cheat and steal to get ahead of the competition and don't care about the consumer as much as the care about profit and image

So let's all ignore the petty squabbles and enjoy the games huh?

I never noticed the Report feature and the complaint window off to the right. Hmmm... Cool!. Its just kind of strange people waste their time going out of their way to find dirt on the Gaint Microsoft and bash their console the Xbox 360 with malice driven hate derived from others; different taste in gaming?!?!?.

PlayStation gaming isn't a Faith why Harcore gamers with prefference for Sony's consoles are threatend by Sony not being on top is beyond me.

I loved the Xbox 1 when it was the under dog never thought twice about it.

I guess the only reason i'm on this site is because Sony's claims in the begining of this generation.

With a basic understanding of VIDs etc(playing sence Atari) the jump PS3 made over the 360 Sony claimed 2-5 times more powerful was bull and got me hooked.

The rabid nature of Sony fans helped me get hooked also i can still remember how savage and belligerent most were when the Xbox1 came out hasn't changed one bit if anything its worse due to MS cutting into the market.

Am sure all 3 of the console companies are guilty of this practice to some extent.

But it really shouldn't matter. Total copies of software sold should be the only REAL number that matters.

the PSP is a prefect example they got pretty good hardware numbers but very few of their games have great success in sales.

Come christmas '07 who ever has the most games sold on their console will have the biggest impact on what gamers will play on for the following 2-3 years.

So Sony isn't cheating it's sales?

I remember they said in january/february they sold 5 million copies of games with 1 million PS3 units sold.

Would have been an attach rate of 5.0 per unit sold. Which clearly is incorrect at that time and even at this time. Launch attach rate was 1.5 game per unit, now 3.4 per unit world wide.

Units sold? Same story. Shipped or sold 1 million PS3's at the end of 2006... 2.8 million sold says nexgenwars.com, so it could be 2 million also.

MS had 10.4 million shipped when the PS3 launched. Half November. They stated that back then.

Fact is, only one thing is certain. The Wii numbers are correct, they're hot at this time, if you want one you have to wait to get it

Weren't M$ saying that they had "Sold" 10 million units as far back as November. I thought they allegedly had a 10mill lead when PS3 came out.

When I first read about "Sold" vs "Shipped" it apparently wasn't just rumour, it was said to be standard practice for M$. I dont know if thats true or not but I dont remember it ever being refuted either.

Maybe it was going on and the numbers are now leveling out to a truer value since they seem to have stalled even though we know XB has still been selling.

It is a big deal too, whether people realise it or not. When M$ touts to the world their massive lead it lends them a sense or strength they might now really deserve. Its certainly a factor in all the exclusive games jumping over. Its simply numbers.

The most interesting thing to me would be out of 10 million, how many have broke, AND if those people are being sent another unit is that counting towards extra sales? I've had 2 break and neither one got repaired. I didn't deal at all with M$, I dealt with EB games and I got a brand new machine each time. So as far as they are concerned I have taken 3 brand new retail units off there hands and that might very well count as 3 sales. Who knows how they've done it.

Nix #7
Has got a good point. M$ could just clear all of this up if they wanted to. They have to know for themselves, so whats the big secret and harm in telling us?

RUMOR: Aliens took Elvis!

There's as much facts in that above sentence than in this whole rumor "news" about MS cheating. Nothing to see here, NEXT.

the earth isnt round

Any person with a brain will instantly realize that this is just MS bashing rumors. If MS is doing this, I can assure you that Sony will also be doing it.
And another thing, that article is saying that MS pushes an extra 1 million out to achieve their target, to whom? You can't just force stock into a store or franchise. The franchise must purchase the stock so this means that the franchise who is receiving the stock also must have wanted it. If a franchise is overstocked, they would not have taken the stock. Shipping 1 million units is almost as good as 1 million sold, it's just a matter of time since a franchise can only hold a limited number of stock, they cannot keep on receiving stock forever.

imho the only issue that is affected here is the misrepresentation that "shipped" and "sold" units do.

Nintendo is reporting "shipped" units, and cause of the turnaround in the shops you can take that number as "sold" atm cause a Wii is not sitting more than a day in any given shop right now

Sony is reporting "shipped" numbers as in shipped from the factory to the distro channels, and "sold" numbers as in reported sales from the market watch companies that count and estimate such numbers , aka npd for US (excluding the biggest retailers e.g. WalMart though)

Microsoft is and always was reporting "sold" as in units SHIPPED from the factorys to the distribution channels, with the reasoning that once THEY (Microsoft) have sold it to some retail channel its sold for THEM.

so the Microsoft "sold" number directly compares to the "shipped" numbers put out by Nintendo and Sony

So you can easily compare all 3 numbers: Microsoft "sold" = Nintendo "shipped" = Sony "shipped"

according to the rather old re-report of the rumor regarding channel stuffing, it would not bother me at all, if Microsoft would report shipped units as shipped, and sold units as sold, but as Microsofts marketing managers repeatedly compared microsoft shipped (named "sold" only by Microsoft) numbers with the competitions "sold" numbers the comparison is quite off.

And fanboyism put away you would have to compare Sony's "shipped" number of "6 million units by end of May" with Microsoft's "12 million sold units by end of June" if you want to be "fair" based upon Microsofts reasoning. But that would be quite unfair regarding Nintendo's Wii sales, as for Nintendo atm shipped == sold contrary to Microsofts Xbox360 and Sony's PS3.

Reasonable estimates regarding the Xbox360 are at ~ 9-10 million units sold TODAY, not last December, and thats a solid number imho. its still unknown if Microsoft adds replaced defective units into the "sold" number on top of the rest, cause following the reasoning a xBox360 that left the factory is counted as "sold" and so units replaced cause they are RRoD'ed would count as new unique sale for MS, wich would be an ugly practice that would promote bad quality as additional sales number drive. I shudder at the implications that could mean for the future consoles.

Some comments said that this "channel stuffing" is also done by others.
Thats prolly true, though i can't see Nintendo stuffing anything atm, as they fail to meet the demand right now ....
But contrary to Microsoft, who report shipped as sold, the channel stuffing would not boost other companies sales numbers at all.
E.g. if Sony stuffs the retail channels with PS3's they can report a higher shipped number, but the sold number is not negatively affected (as in faked). If Nintendo does it again the sales numbers are not affected cause shipped is not sold, and any sane person can understand that and come to his own conclusion. The only reason why this is,only marginally though, newsworthy is that Microsoft on top of "stuffing the channel" is also misreporting shipped units as sold units, which allow them to report fake sales numbers that they can boost to whatever number needed at any given time by shipping more or less consoles.

Neither Sony nor Nintendo can or even do fake their sales numbers in that way, simply cause they report shipped as shipped, and sold as sold.

hope that was clear enough for anyone on why its newsworthy to report it, but why its also quite pointless to report it, too.
Still "News" is news it seems, regardless if you like it or if it is of any interest to you. I tend to read the comments only for such "news" articles that are clearly designed as flamebait. Classic comedy reading the comments of people who insult and fight each other about something rather irrelevant to their actual gaming

i care about is the 1 i spent MY money on. don't give a damn about their numbers. i don't profit from them.

1 -- This is the exact same story that was posted here about a week ago. Only this one is shorter, less informative, more speculative, and uses a source that looks to have simply summarized the general idea seen in the longer blog article already posted here.

2 -- Since all companies do it, who cares. This article is as relevant as a post talking about the original xbox's sales figures and raising the question: Were they exaggerated as well?

This article is here solely because, whoever posted it, liked what it said. Period. It's not news, and it's not relevant. It's meant only to get people ticked off, and the reason is all too obvious---

It was posted in the "360" section, instead of INDUSTRY NEWS where it actually belongs. This is about sales figures, isn't it? So even though it's not real news, if it were to be posted somewhere, shouldn't it be put in the "Industry" section? Apparently, not for everyone. Instead of seeing the implications for the industry of supposed "cheated" sales numbers, the poster saw this article and thought, "360" only. I think that choice demonstrates pretty well the inherant bias in this article and its poster.

WTF? Sony fans are like mud slinging politicians you will do anything to take the attention off your failed console.

EVERYONE uses this tactic.

Why is it ALWAYS necessary to bring up Sony and/or the PS3 when there's an article that's even SLIGHTLY negative toward MS and the 360?

Why can't people like Marty-boy and POG just shut the hell up and not drag Sony into the story? This is an article about MS.
If you want to bring Sony into this, go find an article on them channel stuffing (I'm sure there's something out there).

Geeze, you guys drive me up a fking wall!