has the 360 reached a stable plateau for sales or are there games on the horizon that will push sales? clearly it has/will be more successful than the original in total sales and profit but its actual market share worldwide could wind up the same or even less when this generation ends. would that make it a sucess or failure? please apply logic to responses and offer concrete answers.

Yes, I feel it's been a moderate success to this point... If you exclude the costs of RRoD. MS has grabbed a great foothold in the most important market, North America, and while they have struggled slightly in the Others region, they're still not completely out of the game. Here are a few other points to look at:

- XBLM has launched and while it's far from a resounding success, it appears to be doing decently. Now it's launching in Canada and some European countries, further delving into MS's grand scheme of a home entertainment unit.

- Sony has been somewhat neutralized. Sony's marketshare will not dwarf Microsoft's this generation, that much is obvious. Any way you look at it, that is a huge step for Microsoft.

- Profitability. It's taken awhile but I believe the 360 has entered permanent profitability. They should be making a healthy profit on each unit sold now and sit in a pretty position to drop the price early next year with 65nm GPUs while still keeping their head afloat. Depsite the rantings of fanboys, I have a hard time believing that Sony hasn't spent every round in their chamber already with aggressive price cutting. They shouldn't have much left in 2008.

- Third party software. To put it lightly, third party developers are thrilled with Microsoft right now. From every report I have seen, MS is great at providing excellent development tools and are very helpful when third parties come knocking at their door. It also doesn't hurt that this year, several third party games sold like gangbusters while very few fell flat on their faces.

- XBL is now over five years old and Sony and Nintendo are barely scratching the surface of the feature set MS launched the service with in 2002. Microsoft should be proud of their creation and the competition is still miles behind them.

Overall, MS should be happy with where they stand right now. While 2008 and beyond might be a bit of a struggle for them, they still have the advantage of launching one year earlier next generation also and unlike their problems last generation, I expect them to keep the 360 alive for quite some time after the launch of their next console (something I think they planned for the original Xbox but bad deals with Nvidia and Intel basically killed that idea before it began). The 360 still has room to explode but I don't see it happening; I think it will come close to breaking even overall and after the disaster of the original Xbox, MS has to be pretty happy with that scenario. They're building themselves a solid fanbase and should continue to do so if they can hire some industrial engineers that don't completley f*** up the hardware reliability.

It hasnt made microsoft money rocketpig, how is it a sucess?

I think it's a success just because its doing better than the original X Box after only a couple years in. Anything that costs this much money and sells 15 million is a success.

So the same applies to the PS3?

Success is a relative term. For example MS has some pretty clear goals for the system that doesn't involve making money, and some of those things seem to be successful thus far. Staving off Sony, pushing downloadable movies, getting a box into peoples living room,ect. And things that they may not have expected, but are more than happy with; xbox fanboys.

 In that case the Xbox 1 was also a success since it sold 25M (or whatever). But it costed MS $6 billion in losses so I would call it a massive failure.

I would say Xbox 360 is a failure anywhere but NA. In NA it is pretty successful, at least for now.

It turned a profit last quarter and should do the same this quarter. With the 360 less than halfway through its lifecycle, MS should be pleased with that.

The most significant development for the Xbox 360 is actually in Japan I think.  Can't see them topping 1.75 million in Japan this generation, but if the growth rate continued with Xbox 720 in Japan, Microsoft would be well on its way to becoming a global gaming power.

My take is sales will minimally top 23 million in the USA...2 million in Canada...1.3 million in Japan...and at least 11 million in Others.  In other words, sales of at least 37 million worldwide (to gamers - not shipped).  That's an improvement from the original Xbox by 1.5x in North America, 1.5x in Others, and 2.5x in Japan as a base, about 1.75x improvement overall, as a minimum.  The only qualifying factor would be how strong Sony and Nintendo finish up.  If they end up selling 250 million units between them, then Microsoft's sales pale in comparison, and would stay around 13% like last generation.  More likely, the entirety of hardware sales this generation will be 225 million or so, and Xbox 360 will end up with around 45 million of them, a full 20%, which is significant improvement from the previous generation. 

i think that MS will see a steady course from here on out. It was either this year or will be next year that 360 hits its peak, so sales are growing to start very slowly creeping downwards. i also agree with rocket pig; it will be profitable from here on out.

With it's solid installed base, virtually free profits from XBL downloads, and the perception of gamers, even if Microsoft comes in 3rd, I consider it a resounding success.