Those figures were reported after the change in reporting practices, so that doesn't really change anything that I originally posted (only the LTD). Still, that was purely speculation on my part. Anyway, I've discovered another issue now. According to their 98/99 annual report they also launched Dreamcast in the Asian region in that FY. Thus 900k for first FY includes both Japan and Asia. That means that LTD Japanese shipments could be inflated somewhat, although if only token shipments of a few thousand were made in that FY it may not have been enough to change the figures which were rounded to 10k.
I'm starting to think that the 30.75m shipped by Sega may be accurate....Consolidated/Non Consolidated/Sold to consumers. SoA reported all of those depending on the year. Adding them together results in potentially counting the same console twice or multiple times for the LTD. I'll look into this tomorrow, but according to Famitsu MD was at 25m outside of Japan, and 3.58m in Japan as of 96/03. MD was discontinued in Japan then, but still being shipped to the west. Sega supported it for the next FY, but sales were low. Then for holiday 97 retailers in the US were complaining that MD sales were low and MD was no longer being manufactured anyway. The last significant first party MD releases were holiday 96, so I think it likely that FY96/97 was the last year that Sega manufactured MD before licensing it out to Majesco for 98.
It seems unlikely, but Sonic was bundled with MD for quite a while, so I guess that if we can work out annual shipments whilst Sonic was bundled then we can get a rough guestimate of the minimum number of roms that were produced.
