I must say that I am impressed with what Microsoft has done in the last few months. Lets review 2008
For the first half of the year, Sony made up a lot of ground on MS. It first started by outselling the 360 in Others (in addition to Japan) and then world wide and then even in America. For a while there, it was averaging 40-50k a week better. MGS4 came out, and with promising games on the horizon (including the release of home!)things were looking like the ps3 was going to pass up the 360 and never look back. Then MS struck back.
First it started bombarding Japan with Japanese style RPGs (even outselling the ps3 for six straight weeks!). Then they slashed prices on the 360 (making it the cheapest console out there, and i think they cut prices twice in Europe); then there was getting FF to be multiplat world wide, followed by kick ass games like Gears 2 and Fable 2. The final blow in this round was the NXE (even if the avatars are still somewhat like the creepy miis), which uses many of the advantages from home: social gaming, grouping outside of games, watching movies together etc...And it also make use of Netflix (and does it very well I might add) which helps mitigate one of the best advantages of the PS3: the fact that it is also a high def movie player.
The playstation is not out of it, certainly. One good price cut and they will probably start outselling the 360 again, but who knows when and if that will be or if they can afford it. The ps3 is an amazing console and I still think it is better than the 360 and wii (for my own personal use) but unless they drop the price, it will be relegated to 3rd place.
Bravo MS, Bravo.
