How do you manage to not post the most exciting bits of information attached to all the info above?

Not in Nintendo's PR release, but the Wii is also now Nintendo's best selling console ever (having now surpassed the NES).

Considering how sore Nintendo's shoulders are from how much they like to pat them, I'm kind of surprised Nintendo isn't touting that one.

Looking at these numbers I feel pretty confident we won't see a new Wii in 2010.

You should feel more confident, because Nintendo is know to do the unexpected and things we might not see the point of until it's painfully obvious.

If true, it is only recent news. We must wait until the next time a Nintendo executive issues a statement. I'm sure we'll hear something from Reggie or Iwata or whoever.

I think they will do it once they release their quarterly financial report in a few weeks (covering October-December). The Wii was only 5 million behind the NES at the end of September. The Wii sold more than 5 million just in the US in November/December. So the exact number is not known, but the Wii is at least at 62 million (I would guess closer to 65 or 66 million). The Wii was at about 56 million at the end of September and the NES's lifetime total was about 61 million.

Because we didn't get this info from the Nintendo press release, that's why.  I wanted to get the NPD numbers out before dealing with the spin.

I saw no spin in that PR, the numbers all speak for themselves.

I think with Nintendo phenomenal December performance, PS2 is wiped from the hardware record books as far as individual month and year performance. Only thing left is Total Lifetime sales which is still a moving target.

The numbers speak for themselves, but Nintendo are the ones adding their interpretation in that press release.

I didn't mean that you should have posted the PR, just that there were several records broken with the NPD December sales and there was no mention of that in the original article. I posted the PR so that you know where the info was coming from.

I just thought that was the most exciting part about Dec. NPD and would make for great headlines in getting hits on the site.

We always intended to post the PR, but we saw the numbers first so we tossed'em out there.  The PR actually came out later than the numbers did.  A lot of this stuff actually popped up overnight.

The Wii has probably already broke the PS2's record when you consider the PS2's install base was much smaller than its sales would indicate because of people needing to replace broken systems.

Nintendo has been known for making durable quality systems that aren't plagued with red rings of death or crap like that, so as a result when someone buys a systems odds are they won't need to buy a replacement in 2 years. I've never had a Nintendo system crap out on me. But I hear that is a serious issue for Sony and MS fans.

So actually, that might be the reason the GC narrowly was defeated by the xbox last gen...

I hear PS3s are quite the quality piece of machinery this generation which is a complete turnaround for the disaster that was DRE last gen.

But we all know the story of Sony reporting "Shipped" vs what Sony actually "Sold" so we'll never know if shipped replacements were counted in along with the new purchases, but to remove all doubt, I just hope Nintendo keeps right on selling Wii/DS until both of them out "sell" the highest reported number of Sony systems "shipped".

That is why we can't trust what Sony said/says in determining how many units the PS2 has sold. If we go by their words, the PS2 has "sold" well over 100 million units. Is that the case? Maybe in reality it is only 80 million. Maybe the Wii has already surpassed it. Who knows? We need independent sources.

If the Wii sticks around as PS2, it won't really matter since the Wii has sold over 60 million systems in about 3 years, this puts it well on its way to beat PS2's total. As Chozo said, the true number of PS2's sold is a lot less than the official amount because the PS2 was probably the second most breakdown-prone system released (behind only the Xbox 360). Hell, Sony actually lost a class-action lawsuit over it because so many people had to buy second or third systems because it kept breaking down.

I have a feeling that the number of broken PS2 and XBox systems is lower than it's made out to be, but people on the Internet like to blow things way out of proportion. I doubt it had much impact on system sales numbers.

The Wii is the weakest Nintendo system in terms of durability so it, too, might see a few added numbers because of non-working systems. I've already heard of people who bought their system at or near launch have had the internal memory get corrupted and they bought a new system, and I've a feeling that we are going to be hearing a lot of that over the next few years.

Yeah, but Nintendo reports sales from retail, not number of units "shipped" (to customer/retail) like Sony was doing.

"Shipped" units could have meant whatever Sony wanted it to mean and it always makes their numbers look better than they are. They could have meant shipped to retailers or it could have meant shipped from warehouse, and regardless of which one it was referring to it could have been replacements to broken systems since stores sell warranties so that they can swap systems and return broken units back to the manufacturer just as you could do for your manufacturer warranty. Both could be counted as another shipped unit when Sony sends the replacement back out.

My guess is that the number of broken PS2 systems was probably no more than a couple hundred thousand. Unfortunately, we'll never know.

Yep. In fact, Sony used to included systems that were just sitting in warehouses (systems waiting for retailers to order them) too. So Sony was basically including every system manufactured when they reported their "sales" numbers.

As for Wii, EVERY piece of electronics will have a fail rate. The difference is that Wii failures have been extremely low while PS2 failures were well above the normal rate.

Can anyone provide any evidence of the number of busted PS2 systems?

AFAIK there is no solid number on the actual amount of busted systems. Just wide spread report of the most common error which was DRE. DRE on PS2 was almost as common as RRoD on the 360 and we all know how bad that was.
I knew several people that were on atleast their 2nd PS2 and some others that were on on their 3rd or 4th. Of course I also knew people that only had one this whole time and never needed to place it.

The real issue with the PS2 numbers is that we only know how many systems were produced and shipped to Sony's warehouse. What we don't know is how many of those systems produced were sold at retail to unique customers, used as warranty replacements or just bought to replace a failed system.

When Sony says that they have sold 100million PS2;a they want us to think that they have 100million PS2 users out there buying games. But if 6 million PS2 owners are on their 3rd or 4th(purchased) PS2 and another 10-15 million PS2 owners have had to just send/trade in their PS2 for a warranty replacement, then how many PS2 owners are there really?

Just using the numbers above, that would bring actual PS2 owners down to 60-70 million and not the 100 or so Million Sony would want us to believe.

To be fair, if the systems were manufactured (shipped), then odds are they ended up in consumers hands at some point. Its hard to conceive that there are stockpiles of millions of unsold PS2s out there somewhere. So if Sony "shipped" it, then odds are its in someone's hands.

Unless they are like those old E.T. atari games that are now in a landfill somewhere...

What about broken ones?

I think you misunderstood. The problem is that does "shipped" mean sent to a store to be sold or does "shipped" also mean sent out as replacements to broken consoles.

I don't doubt that the PS2 has the highest console failure rate ever as I've heard a lot about systems breaking and having issues and what not, but it is still all anecdotal evidence. I was just wondering if anybody ever did research on the amount of systems that were broken (and replaced), as it would be nice to have some solid facts to give us an idea of exactly what such a number is.

Probably doesn't exist in the wild.  Tracking and disclosure wasn't so robust back then.

The only one who might have any kind of solid idea of it is Sony, and there's no way they're going to make it public if they do.