Who will win?

[Bodhesatva]

It really is not too early. Look at the history of video games: six months after the release of the last system, the system that was selling the best won every single time.

In other words, the PS3 coming back to win would be historically unprecedented. "Historically unprecedented" equates, in the statistical jargon, to "unlikely" or "very unlikely." I'd agree that nothing is certain yet, but you could say that at any point; theoretically the Gamecube could have started selling like gangbusters a year ago, selling over 100 million more consoles and going on to win the generation at the very end. That was possible, it was just enormously and hilariously unlikely.

So at what point do you call it? Do you call it when there's less than a 1 percent chance for the current best seller to be suddenly dethroned? 5 percent? 10 percent? .0001 percent? That rule isn't set in stone. I'm not sure I'd "call it" yet either, Fractal, but at this point the odds of the PS3 seeing a sudden, dramatic turn around are low: I'd put them in the 10 to 20 percent range. That's not impossible -- just historically unprecedented.