What figures are Sony referring to here?

[Zeus]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6157470.html

From my understanding, the PSP never passed the DS in the US and the DS is pulling away now. It Japan it's been over since launch and even in Europe the DS is selling like mad

[Nev]

I'm telling you, man.

Sony's marketing meetings involve <a href="viewtopic.php?t=10785#100577">many things</a>, but truth is not one of them, generally...

[Lox]

Either they aren't counting the DS as a "next-gen handheld" and so they have no competition and are winning. Or they pull their little move where they count units shipped as units sold and are using that to pretend they are doing well.

Sony statements about units sold are such a joke that it's almost sad to read them nowadays.

[Julius Seeker]

Sony does not consider the DS to be in the same market as the PSP, this has been stated by them before; even though everyone else considers it so.

The North American hardware market has been a rivalry of DS and PS2 for the past year; DS being the overall top selling system this year. Software sales, the PSP has yet to surpass the Gamecube during any month since its release, it is consistently last place out of all the active systems.

Within Japan, the Nintendo DS is destroying everything in software and hardware.

If you think about it though, the PSP and the DS both have gaming functions, but they are two very different systems. The DS is more mass gaming market due to its price, whereas the PSP is more for the media market. The DS does have add-ons which can turn it into a media center, but it is not a main function.

[Nev]

Guys - despite the semi-humorous tone of my messages - I'm really, really not kidding. Sony will say or do *anything* to make itself look better in its press releases. They're notorious within the game industry for that.

Of course they know that the DS is their main competition. Of course they know they're getting destroyed. But if they "consider it to be in a different category", they can release "winning" press releases under a veneer of legitimacy. And hype is everything in this business, so that's what they do.

DO NOT READ SONY PRESS RELEASES FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES. Seriously. I do not think even 20% of what they say these days is likely to have any basis in reality.

And Seek, honestly, I'm ashamed of you for even trying to defend their bullshit. My small, cathode-ray TV with built-in VCR and DVD player has very different functionality than, say, my mom's boyfriend's monstrous standalone plasma. Does this mean we shouldn't count mine as a television when it comes to units sold?

[Zeus]

Guys - despite the semi-humorous tone of my messages - I'm really, really not kidding. Sony will say or do *anything* to make itself look better in its press releases. They're notorious within the game industry for that.

They are mainly a marketing company after all