Well I don't expect MS to just lay down and accept this. Thus Mass Effect 2, Alan Wake, Halo: Reach, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Fable 3, and more than likely Gears of War 3 make the 360's exclusive lineup quite impressive. Then of course throw in Natal in there. MS has a pretty good lineup to make a $200 360 a very good buy.
But PS3 isn't going to lay down either. Big thing going against the PS3 is after a big holiday season, we have to see how it'll do in the normal months out of the year which we never got to see. If we look back at how 360 performed, you saw some higher months in the beginning and then a complete fall off in the summer. Might see something similar for PS3 considering it had already happened to the Ps3 in 2008 from 2007. But PS3's lineup is quite impressive as well with God of War III, MAG, Heavy Rain, Last Guardian, Modnation Racers, and of course Gran Turismo 5. Then toss in the Sony Motion controller to try and compete with Natal.
Personally, I doubt Natal and Sony Motion controller will make much of a difference. Nintendo just has too much control in that area, and its doubtful 3rd party support is going to be enough to turn a lot of buyers over. Bar an extremely aggressive marketing campaign, an offering from Nintendo in 2010 similar to that of Wii Sports Resort will probably discard those as meaningful... especially the Sony Motion Controller which is a very modest offering. Natal, could create its own little niche though and be able to get more developer support and buyers, but it also had to get over that hump of 360 being an action genre console.
So will the sales be close? It appears that way but I expect PS3 to be doing much better in the first 4 months, with both evening out in the summer, and then an undecided holiday season. Potential price cuts might occur but that would work in MS's favor not Sony's given $150 looks a lot better than $250. But I would think none of them would want to drop the price considering they would make nothing off of it for the rest of the generation. I also think Nintendo is going to play a pretty big role. The downed sales in 2009 allowed Sony to get some larger sales to make more competition between PS3 and 360. Had Wii still been on the same levels, it is hard to think the PS3 Slim would have been as successful as it was. Thus if Nintendo aggressively approaches 2010, it could be a completely different story. But for now PS3 over 360 but much closer when it is all said and done.
