The most critical Christmas was about two years ago, after Nintendo had unveiled the Wiimote. ;)
Seriously, though, all this talk about PS3 or 360 being forever doomed to third place based on this Christmas alone is silly. I can possibly see these predictions coming true if 360 outsells PS3 by a wide margin...the system already has a head start and PS3 is always going to cost more than 360. That said, the gap between these two is just 6 million and there are still tens of millions of unsold customers out there...this could easily go the same way as Genesis and Super NES, where one company "wins" for a year or two and then the other one takes over. The GTA IV delay makes this holiday even less important than before.
So I guess I disagree with the whole premise of this thread - this is a very interesting Christmas for the Xbox 360 because it must face PS3 at full(er) strength and it has Halo 3 coming out, plus it may be facing backlash about the reliability - but I suspect every single Christmas from now on is going to be a huge fight between 360 and PS3.
