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scat398 on 31 July 2008
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This is a post from the neogaf board that explains the numbers. While the PS3 is still behind the 360 it is fairly even, as it should be.

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from GAF member antipode:

"This is misleading - the PS3 is not dominating the 360 in revenue.

If you scroll down in that statement you will see the more accurate numbers in the "non-GAAP revenues" section, and the PS3 definitely does not lead the PS3.

Xbox 360: 81
PC: 70
PS3: 68
PS2: 40
Wii: 39
PSP: 26
DS: 21

Why the difference? EA bundles together the revenue for microtransactions together with the software - the revenue numbers above are not just from SKUs shipped to stores, but the actual and future expected values of online purchases for those games.

There is a big difference in how EA handles those numbers for the 360 and DS and all other platforms.

For the DS, there is no estimation necessary - there are no DS microtransactions. For the 360, there is a special case - EA feels that, by working with Microsoft, they can accurately gauge the total number of microtransactions that are going to occur for a title at the time it is shipped. This is probably because Microsoft shares with them online sales data for other titles - or perhaps Microsoft is delivering them money upfront and not on a per-sale basis.

For all other platforms, EA does not have confidence in what the microtransaction revenues will be at the time of shipment. So what EA has started doing this year is recognizing over a 6 to 9 month period the expected online revenue for these games. It does this only for the official GAAP revenue numbers. For the non-GAAP numbers - EA continues to estimate the microtransaction value as the game is shipped, because they will not be audited for those numbers.

So why is the GAAP PS3 revenue number this quarter so large? It's not because they are getting more money from PS3 games sold in stores than the 360. It's because estimated microtransaction values of PS3 games sold Christmas last year are still showing up in the official revenue numbers this quarter - but the 360 revenue numbers recognized those values when the games were sold 2 quarters ago.
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