Its Japan and Japan alone. Without it Sony would have never caught up.

It's US and US alone.  Without it MS would never have taken the lead...

See, this kind of argument is essentially meaningless when used with bias.

really? i mean getting second place when another race starts doesnt mean much.

360 has NA. Sony has EMEAA. Both essentially cancel eachother out. 

Japan is the only thing that allowed Sony to close the gap year after year. That sir, aint bias. 

Well... Sony is just growing in market share before the new generation start... for now this is the best they can do after the previous huge profitable last generation.

Microsoft is just profiting now before the new generation because the they need profit now after the huge loses in previous generation.

Seems fine to me... both company's goal.

If EA and NA cancel each other out, then both systems would be even in the end.  MS would not have a NA advantage.  Bad logic is bad.

You beat me to it!

Sales2099... by bias I mean you can't position an argument like that one way - it goes both way depending upon which way you state it.  You simply positioned it from MS/360 perspective which is flawed.

I said this like a long time ago and I got bashed to all hell for it.

Here is the way I think about it. In 5 years the PS2 sold around 130 million units, and in about the same 5 years the original Xbox sold around 25 million. Then in this generation both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 have sold around the 50 million mark. Because of this I don't think the terms "Sony selling more than Microsoft" really come into play if you think about it. The Xbox brand more than doubled its market share while PlayStation maintained less than half of its PS2's audience. Those numbers don't seem like a success story for Sony, but more of a success story to Microsoft.

Oh and by the way this article was written by Colin Moriarty, one of the 3 most hardcore Sony fans at IGN. So basically this article was seen coming for a while now. He sure does love saying it on Podcast Beyond.

Imagine if the 360 with the harddrive launched as sub $300 range and isn't still selling for an average price of $300. Imagine if it didn't have the RROD and microsoft realized before nintendo motion control would be a big hit this gen. Imagine if microsoft invested its money on 1st party studios to build up a good list of exclusives. Imagine if the year prior to ps3/wii launch Japan got blown up by an alien race. "The 360 would surely be selling a lot better then the competition."

Yes if you think of the best possibilities for your console launch, ofc its going to sell well. Thing is, perfect launches never happened.

And a lot of the things you guys whish sony did at launch would have ensured failure. Either sony would have gone bankrupt selling a console that costs 700$ to make for $300 or If the ps3 had a $300 initial pricetag, it would have been horribly underpowered. No bluray. No free wifi. God of war and killzone would have looked lame. Forget about uncharted ever becoming a good game, since all its praise is about its graphics... That 17% system failure would have probably been closer to 40% if they rushed out the console to launch one year early. It took them around 1 years to get even 1 decent game. Imagine if it released at 2005 and console owners had to wait 2 years only playing motocross and resistance...