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These are numbers I figured out for a discussion in another thread, but I like number crunching so I'm going to try to follow this through the holidays in its own thread.  Basically, it compares last year's 360 sales after the price drop to this year's PS3 sales after its price drop and slimification.  Also, I'm including the sales of the "also ran" console from each year to compare how they held up in the wake of the increased sales of the competition.  The final column shows the net effect on the 360/PS3 gap.  I'm not following Wii sales here even though there was a price cut this year because it wasn't the same sort of momentum changing/disrupting kind of thing that has happened with the HD consoles.  Let's just say Wii has amazing sales all the time and leave it at that.  Also, I realize that 360 also had a price cut of sorts this year (and PS3 last year) but this is about the main ones which took effect during the first week of September in each year.

So far, the PS3's price cut has had a more dramatic effect than the 360's last year, but the 360 effect was more of a slow burn and really took off from Black Friday onwards so I expect the PS3's "lead" here to be cut down substantially in two weeks.  Hopefully, a somewhat tight race will emerge.  Would be interesting if the two years just end up negating each other in terms of the gap (but I think that's unlikely).

I'll make a new chart each week instead of just updating the original post.  Basically, I intend this thread to be for numbers junkies by a numbers junkie.  It's not meant as any sort of advocacy so please avoid turning it into that.  Predictions and such and comments about the numbers themselves are welcome of course.

I should also point out that the second column of numbers is something of an "apples & oranges" comparison as it looks at PS3 numbers going into it's 3rd holiday season vs. 360 numbers going into its 5th holiday season (which I actually thought would put the PS3 numbers at an advantage, but see for yourself...).

These are worldwide numbers, obviously.  I did figure everything out by region at first but that took forever and I'd never be able to do it on a weekly basis.

WEEK ENDED SEPT 05/06 TO NOV 14/15 Price-reduced console sales Other console sales Gap increase (360) or decrease (PS3) during period
2008 360: 2,268,821 PS3: 1,745,616 360: 523,205
2009 PS3: 3,353,078 360: 1,883,572 PS3: 1,469,506
Lead PS3: 1,084,257 360: 137,956 PS3: 946,301 (net 2008+2009 change)

The number in the bottom right corner is the net effect of both years combined on the 360/PS3 gap.  Basically this means that PS3 has made up the ground it lost for the period in 2008 and then caught up another 946,301 units.  Like I said, this number may change considerably beginning with the Black Friday week.