So far its doing worse. http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php

I will offer two points. One against it and one for it.

Against it - The PS3's shortage ended considerably sooner into it's life than the 360, so it didn't have as much of a hindrance in that regard.

In defense of it - It also didn't release in Europe until March, so it's behind in a pretty important region for it.

So far it's doing worse? LOL

They're practically completely even.

Actually when you take in that gap for the European Launch, its probably selling a little bit better. When you look at the lack of true System sellers for the PS3 and the fact that the 360 had those games its first year (Call of Duty 2, Dead Rising, GRAW to name a few), I would say its selling far better then the 360.

Its going to be very interesting to see how it sells next year when all the true AAA system movers are released. Im going to assume a little bette, just like this year, for every game I can think of next year for the PS3 there was an equally huge 360 title this year, Killzone 2, LittlebigPlanet, Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo 5 and then you have Halo 3, Bioshock and Mass Effect.

and the 360 didnt have the Wii to compete with. in its first year.

Comparing Xbox 360 and PS3 first year sales isn't fair. Back when Xbox 360 was released, It was the only next gen console of the time and consumers aren't as ready in upgrading consoles than when PS3 was released. This coupled with the fact that everyone was was waiting for the much hyped PS3, Xbox 360 was struggling with consumer acceptance.

From this standpoint, PS3 was set to benefit. So from the chart above, although the PS3 is running a similar curve with Xbox 360, it's doing worse.

Lets think about this for a moment. Why do we care which console is selling better at all? For one reason and one reason only....the console with the highest userbase is far more likely to get exclusive games.

Therefore, it does not matter if Sony didn't launch when they said they would in Europe, it does not matter if the PS3 sold well "for it's price" and it does not matter if Sony's console sold well "given a lack of system-sellers." At the end of the day all that matters is what number of consoles is sold, because that is what publishers will look at when they are looking at development costs and fielding requests from Sony and Microsoft for exclusive games.

If you really want to start saying things like, "bu-bu-but Sony is doing GREAT cause the PS3 is SO ex-ex-expensive," then we should also look at where Sony SHOULD be. 70% of the market last generation and now they are being beaten by the company that lost billions of dollars last time round......Sony SHOULD already have nailed the Xbox 360 to the wall.

"""
Back when Xbox 360 was released, It was the only next gen console of the time and consumers aren't as ready in upgrading consoles than when PS3 was released. This coupled with the fact that everyone was was waiting for the much hyped PS3, Xbox 360 was struggling with consumer acceptance.
"""

==> it is obvious that Gears of War, particuylarly in NA was sufficient to sell the console very well whatever the PS3 was released or not.
If the PS3 is behind in this year to year comparaison it is mainly because of the NA numbers that clearly show that NA consumers bought the Xbox360 without thinking to the PS3.

EDIT : just look the NA numbers for black friday, year to year, you will see it is quite close ...

True. It's not entirely fair because of the price. Price means more than hype. Much more. Regards consumer acceptance and expectation - PS3 was highly anticipated system but we all know what happened after price announcment (WTF?!) so if we consider high price, pretty faint line-up (only Resistance for US launch) and all the bad PR I don't think PS3 is doing worse. With 8 million consoles sold and pretty solid performance of PS3 ports (AC, CoD4, Madden etc.) Sony can enter the 2008 without fear. 

^^

wow nice selective quoting.