Just to be clear - the games HAD BEEN the deciding factor until now. Without Halo and Gears Microsoft would have had not chance to get into the game. Without being able to break Sony's exclusivity on key 3rd parties, Microsoft would never had been able to stay in the game.
But this is the past. It is done and Microsoft has now all of these blockbusters. Sony has them all as well.
Moving forward, the games are no longer a differentiating factor for any of the system when 95% of the games will show up on both systems. And when there are so many good games for each of the systems, there is no one (or a couple) new exclusive titles that will become the deciding factor.
So looking ahead (and only ahead, not backwards) - it is about price and critical mass of friends network that will be the deciding factor of buying decisions. Again - the 360 is at an a strong advantage.
About the Blu-Ray: It allowed the PS3 a decent start when they were lagging so much behind. It used to be the cheapest BR player on the market and the enthousiasts jumped all over it. But those days are over. The stand alone BR players are at the $170 price range and will drop towards the $120 during next year. The effect of the BR drive on the $400 PS3 is now marginalized.
Prediction made on 11/1/2008:
Q4 2008: 27M xbox LTD, 20M PS3 LTD . 2009 sales: 11M xbox, 9M PS3
