Sony is Rounding up Sales Figures to Look Good

We always read about the great sales Sony is making with the Playstation 3 and how its console is the only one that has a real future. We are constituently being hit with numbers that prove they are right but I had reasons to believe (more correct would be intuition) they were way off the charts. No one can blame them for trying to show off in front of Microsoft or for snowballing us.

There is a meeting Sony is having today entitled "Sony Group's Mid-Term Corporate Strategy Meeting" - several key speakers attending it. We are mainly concerned by one of them: Kazuo Hirai, President & Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment. He has a lovely slide, with performances and other interesting numbers, but one of those images really stands out. Here is how Sony interprets a basic rule of mathematics: 2 + 2 = 5 because it is a more rounded figure than four and it makes us look good at the same time. No one except for us has five � therefore, we rock (Sony CEO). As you can see for yourselves in the picture, Sony claims to have sold until now 37 million PSPs and 12 million PS3s. I know the graph says "over x million" but hey, it�s only millions, why quibble with decimals? One of the reasons I really doubt the "over x million" is simple: if you have "over something", then you say it because there is no shame in having 37.5 million consoles. You only say more if there are, in fact, less. Please stay with me, the logic is irrefutable (Vulcan School of Philosophy). If we add 37 million with 12 million, we have 49. Simple arithmetic, but not for Sony. Two plus two equals five - therefore, 37 plus 12 is over 50.

Now that we "know" how Sony is rounding up numbers, it�s easy to assume that other numbers have been adjusted accordingly over time. In Sony's annual report, there are 3.3 billion dollar losses due to "strategic pricing". I say we make it a full 4 billion dollars. A second example is from spring 2008, when Sonny apparently shipped 280,800 PS3 compared with a measly 254,600 from Microsoft. I have no doubt Microsoft is also tempering with the numbers but at least they don�t show it (yet). We can safely assume that the 280,800 are in fact about 200,000 (remember that Sony operates with different mathematical laws). The examples could continue. The one thing you have to remember from this piece of information is the following: if Sony is giving us numbers, we need to round them up in order to get a correct result. More is less and less is more. A simple lesson in marketing and this one�s for free (more or less).