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misterd on 11 April 2008
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Microsoft was never going to jump into the market and claim the top spot. Nintendo could do it because it had NO competition. Sony could do it because Sega collapsed. But MS was rushing into a field with two strong, established competitors, and knew it would be a long, hard slog to simply gain credibility.

By beating Nintendo last gen, MS showed it deserves to be in this business.

This generation it will outcompete Sony in the world's largest market, it will have established itself as a "must have" console for "hard core" gamers, it will have substantially improved upon XBox sales, and for the first time will start to show a profit in this business. These are not small accomplishments.

If we pretend that this year's sales hold for a considerable period (I'm not convinced they will, but since that seemed to be the postulate in the OP, let's run with it). Let's look at the chart:

http://vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=PS3&reg1=All&cons2=PS3&reg2=All&cons3=X360&reg3=All&start=39446&end=39544&weekly=1

50,000 a week may sound big, but in context of 20+ million consoles, the differential is barely noticable. At the start of the year, it was 16.1m vs 8.8m. Now it's 18.1m vs 11.6m. That's narrowed the gap by one million in 3 months. So by year's end, at that pace, Sony will be still be behind by 4 million or so. It will take another year for Sony to have a chance to catch up, and even then the 360 will retain a sizable lead in the US. And it is very likely that, as the end of 2009 draws near, any Sony announcement of "we finally caught up!" will be drowned out by Microsoft's announcement of a new console for 2010 or 2011. Given just how big the gap was between the two last generation, I don't see how this can be seen as a phail for MS.

Most important to this is Nintendo. They have shown with the Wii that it is possible to dramatically leap over your competition - if you have the right product. MS will have a chance to get a big jump on the next Sony machine. If they design it right, learn how to combine the core and casual appeal in a moderately priced machine, I think they have a very good chance to make an even better showing next generation.